







































« 






































X 

































The *********** i He * H 

Silence of Dean Maitland* * 

****** by Maxwell Grey 

'Vn^«jw <i' SUx.<3L ~ V,1rr. ; 



Chicago and New York *** 

Rand, McNally & Company 

*♦*♦*** 4 ******* 




{ 








THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


PART I. 


“ Not poppy, nor mandragora, 

Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world. 
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep 
Which thou ow’dst yesterday.” 


CHAPTER I. 

The gray afternoon was wearing on to its chill close; 
the dark cope of immovable dun cloud overhead seemed 
to contract and grow closer to the silent world beneath it; 
and the steep, chalky hill, leading from the ancient vil- 
lage, with its hoary castle and church, up over the bleak, 
barren down, was a weary thing to climb. 

The solitary traveller along that quiet road moved her 
limbs more slowly, and felt her breath coming more 
quickly and shortly, as she mounted higher and higher, 
and the gray Norman tower lessened and gradually sunk 
out of sight behind her. But she toiled bravely on 
between the high tangled hedges, draped with great cur- 
tains of traveller’s joy, now a mass of the silvery seed- 
feathers which the country children call “old man’s 
beard,” and variegated with the deep-purple leaves of 
dogwood, the crimson of briony and roseberry, the gleam- 
ing black of privet, and the gold and orange reds of ivy 
hangings; and, though her pace slackened to a mere 
crawl, she did not pause till she reached the brow of the 
hill, where the hedges ceased, and the broad white high- 
road wound over the open down. 

Here, where the inclosed land ended, was a five-barred 
gate in the wild hedge-row, and here the weary pedes- 
trian, depositing the numerous parcels she carried on the 

5 


6 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


ground at her feet, rested, her arms supported on the 
topmost bar, and her face and the upper portion of her 
tall figure traced clearly against the gray, gloomy sky. 
Some linnets fluttered out of the hedge beside her, one or 
two silent larks sprung up from the t A of the downland 
sloping away from the gate, and sojnq rooks sailed cawing 
overhead. All else was still with the weird, dreamy still- 
ness that hangs oyer the earth on a day of chill east wind 
haze. 

There is a brooding expectancy about such a day that 
works strongly on the imagination, and suggests the dark 
possibilities of irresistible Fate. There is an austere poe- 
try in the purply gray, breathless earth and the dark, 
unchanging sky, and a mute pathos in the quiet hush of 
weary Nature, thus folding her hands for rest, which has 
an unutterable charm for some temperaments, and 
touches far deeper chords than those vibrated by the 
brilliance and joyous tumult of life and song in the 
pleasant June-time. There is something of the infinite 
in the very monotony of the coloring; the breathless 
quiet, the vagueness of outline, and dimness of the all- 
infolding mist are full of mystery, and invest the most 
commonplace objects with romance. 

The sense of infinity was deepened in this case by the 
vast sweep of the horizon which bounded our pedestrian's 
gaze. The gray fallows and wan stubble-fields sloped 
swiftly away from the gate to a bottom of verdant past- 
ures dotted with trees and homesteads; beyond them were 
more dim fields, and then a wide belt of forest, princi- 
pally of firs. To the right, the valley, in which nestled 
the now unseen tower of Chalkburne, widened out, 
bounded by gentle hills, till the stream indicating its 
direction became a river, on the banks of which stood the 
mist-veiled town of Oldport, the tall tower of whose 
church rose light, white, and graceful against the iron- 
gray sky, emulating in the glory of its maiden youth — 
for it had seen but two lustres — the hoary grandeur of its 
Norman parent at Chalkburne. Beyond the town, the 
river rolled on, barge-laden, to the sea, the faint blue 
line of which was blurred by a maze of masts where the 
estuary formed a harbor. 

To the left of the tired gazer stretched a wide cham- 
paign, rich in woodland, and bounded in the far distance 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


7 


by two chalky summits, at whose steep bases surged the 
unseen sea, quiet to-day on the surface, but sullen with 
the heavy roar of the ground-swell beneath. Here and 
there, in the breaks of wood and forest on the horizon, 
Almazs accustomed eyes saw some faint gray touches 
which in bright summer were tiny bays of sapphire sea. 

Alma Lee herself made- a bright point of interest in the 
afternoon grayness, as she leaned wearily, and not un- 
gracefully, on the gate, her face and figure outlined 
clearly against the dark sky. Her dress was a bright 
blue, and her scarlet plaid shawl, fastened tightly about 
her shoulders, revealed and suggested, as only a shawl 
can, a full, supple form, indicative of youth and health. 
Her dark, thick hair was crowned by a small velvet hat, 
adorned with a bright bird’s wing; and her dark eyes and 
well-formed features, reposeful and indifferent as they 
were at the moment, suggested latent vehemence and 
passion. Her hands and feet were large, the former bare, 
and wrapped in the gay shawl for warmth. 

Alma was not thinking of the mystery and infinite 
possibility suggested by the gray landscape before her; 
still less was she dreaming of the tragic shades Fate was 
casting even now upon her commonplace path. Unsus- 
pecting and innocent she stood, lost in idle thought, deaf 
to the steps of approaching doom, and knowing nothing 
of the lives that were to be so tragically entangled in the 
mazes of her own. Could she but have had one glimpse 
of the swift-coming future, with what horror would the 
simple country girl have started back and struggled 
against the first suspicion of disaster! 

The silence was presently broken by four mellow, 
slowly falling strokes from the gray belfry of Chalk- 
burne; then all was still again, and Alma began to pick 
up her parcels. Suddenly she heard the sound of hoofs 
and wheels, and, dropping her packages, turned once 
more to the gate, and appeared a very statue of contem- 
plation by the time a dog-cart, drawn by a high-stepping 
chestnut, and driven by a spick and span groom, fair- 
haired and well-featured, drew up beside her, and the 
groom sprung lightly to the ground. 

“Come, Alma,” he said, approaching the pensive 
figure, which appeared unconscious of him, “you won’t 
say no now? You look dog-tired.” 


8 


THE SILENCE OF LEAN MAITLAND. 


“1 shall say exactly what I please, Mr. Judkins,” 
she replied. 

“ Then say yes, and jump up. Chestnut is going like 
a bird, and will have you at Swaynestone in no time. 
Do say yes, do ee now.” 

“ Thank you, I intend to walk.” 

“ Just think what a walk it is to walk to Swaynestone. 
and you so tired.” 

“lam not tired.” 

“Then, why are you leaning on that there gate ?” 

“ I am admiring the view, since you are so very inquis- 
itive.” 

“ Oh, Lord ! the view ! There’s a deal more view to 
be seen from the seat of this here cart, and its pleasant 
flying along like a bird. Come now, Alma, let me help 
you up.” 

“ Mr. Judkins, will you have the kindness to drive on ? 
I said in Oldport that I intended to walk. It’s very 
hard a person mayn’t do as she pleases without all this 
worry,” replied Alma, impatiently. 

“Wilful woman mun have her way,” murmured the 
young man ruefully. “Well, let me carry them parcels 
home, at least.” 

“ I intend to carry them myself, thank you. Good 
afternoon; and Alma turned her back upon the mortified 
youth and appeared lost in the charms of landscape. 

“ Well, darn it ! if you won’t come, you won’t ; that’s 
flat !” the young man exclaimed, angrily. “ This is your 
nasty pride, Miss Alma ; but, mind you, pride goes 
before a fall,” he added, springing to his perch, and 
sending the high-stepper flying along the level down- 
road like the wind, with many expressions of anger and 
disappointment, and sundry backward glances at Alma, 
who gazed with unruffled steadiness on the fields. 

“I wonder,” she mused, “why a person always hates a 
person who makes love to them? I liked Charlie Jud- 
kins well enough before he took on with this love-non- 
sense.” 

And she did not know that by declining that brief 
drive she had refused the one chance of escaping all the 
subsequent tragedy, and that her fate was even now 
approaching in the growing gloom. 

But what is this fairy music ascending from the 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


9 


direction of Chalkburne, and growing clearer and louder 
every moment? Sweet, melodious, drowsily cheery, ring 
out five tiny merry peals of bells, each peal accurately 
matched with the other, and consisting of five tones. 
The music comes tumbling down in sweet confusion, 
peal upon peal, chime breaking into chime, in a sort of 
mirthful strife of melody, through all which a certain 
irregular rhythm is preserved, which keeps the blending 
harmonies from degenerating into dissonance. With a 
sweep and a clash and a mingling of sleepy rapture, the 
elfin music filled all the quiet hazy air around Alma, and 
inspired her with vague pleasure as she turned her head 
listening in the direction of the dulcet sounds, and dis- 
cerned their origin in the nodding head of a large silk- 
coated cart-horse looming through the haze. 

He was a handsome, powerful fellow, stepping firmly 
up the hill with the happy consciousness of doing good 
service which seems to animate all willing, well-behaved 
horses, and emerging into full view at the head of four 
gallant comrades, each nodding and stepping as cheerily 
as himself, with a ponderous wagon behind them. Each 
horse wore his mane in love-locks, combed over his eyes, 
the hair on the massive neck being tied here and there 
with bows of bright woollen ribbon. Each tail was care- 
fully plaited at its spring from the powerful haunches for 
a few inches; then it was tied with another bright knot, 
beneath which the remainder of the tail swept in untram- 
melled abundance almost down to the pasterns, the latter 
hidden by long fringes coming to the ground. The pon- 
derous harness shone brightly on the broad, shining 
brown bodies, and, as each horse carried a leading-rein, 
thickly studded with brass bosses and fastened to the 
girth, and there was much polished brass about headstall, 
saddle, and collar, they presented a very glittering 
appearance. 

But the crowning pride of every horse, and the source 
of all the music which was then witching the wintry air, 
was the lofty erection springing on two branching wires 
from every collar, and towering far above the pricked ears 
of the proud steeds. These wires bore a long narrow 
canopy placed at right angles to the horse’s length, and 
concealing beneath a deep fringe of bright scarlet worsted 
the little peal of nicely graduated bells. Balls of the 


10 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


same bright worsted studded the roof of the little canopy, 
and finished the gay trappings of the sturdy rustics, who 
bore these accumulated honors with a sort of meek 
rapture. 

The wagon these stout fellows drew needed all their 
bone and sinew to bring it up and down the steep, hilly 
roads. Its hind-wheels were as high as Almazs head ; 
their massive felloes, shod with double tires, were a foot 
broad; the naves were like moderate-sized casks. High 
over the great hind wheels arched the wagon's ledge in a 
grand sweep, descending with a boat-like curve to the 
smaller front wheels, whence it rose again, ending high 
over the wheeler's haunches, like the prow of some old 
ship over the sea. A massive thing of solid timber it 
was, with blue wheels and red body, slightly toned by 
weather. On the front, in red letters on a yellow ground, 
was painted, “ Richard Long, Malbourne, 1860." 

Two human beings, who interrupted the fairy music 
with strange gutturals and wild ejaculations to the 
steeds, mingled with sharp whip-cracks, accompanied 
this imposing equipage. One was a tall, straight-limbed 
man in fustian jacket and trousers, a coat slung hussar- 
wise from his left shoulder, and a cap worn slightly to 
one side, with a pink chrysanthemum stuck in it. His 
sunburned face was almost the hue of his yellow-brown 
curls and short beard; his eyes were blue; and his strong 
labored gait resembled that of his horses. The other 
was a beardless lad, his satellite, similarly arrayed, minus 
the flower. Sparks flew from the road when the iron 
hoofs and heavy iron boots struck an occasional flint. 
When the great wagon was fairly landed on the brow of 
the hill, the horses were brought to by means of sundry 
strange sounds and violent gestures on the part of the 
men, and, with creaking and groaning and hallooing, the 
great land-ship came to anchor, the elfin chimes 
dropped into silence, interrupted by little bursts of 
melody at every movement of the horses, and the lad 
seized a great wooden mallet and thrust it beneath the 
hind wheel. The carter leaned placidly against the 
ponderous shaft with his face to Alma, and struck a 
match to kindle his replenished pipe. 

“ Coldish," he observed, glancing with surly indiffer- 
ence toward her. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


11 


“It is cold/’ returned Alma, drawing her shawl cozily 
round her graceful shoulders; while the wheeler, stimu- 
lated into curiosity by his master's voice, turned round to 
look at Alma, and shook out a little peal of bells, which 
roused the emulation of his four brothers, who each 
shook out a little chime on his own account; while the 
wagoner glanced slowly round the vast horizon, and, 
after some contemplation, said in a low, bucolic drawl — 

“ Gwine to hrain, I 'lows." 

“ It looks like it," replied Alma. “ How is your wife, 
William ? " 

The wagoner again interrogated the horizon for inspi- 
ration, and, after some thought, answered with a jerk, 
“ Neuce the same." 

“I hope she will soon be about again," said Alma; and 
the leader emphasized her words by shaking a little 
music from his canopy, and thus stimulated his brothers 
to do likewise. “ You come home lighter than you set 
out," she added, looking at the nearly empty wagon, 
which she had seen pass in the morning filled with straw. 

William turned slowly round and gazed inquiringly at 
the wagon, as if struck by a new idea, for some moments; 
then he said, “Ay." After this he looked thoughtfully 
at Alma and her parcels for some moments, until his soul 
again found expression in the words, “ Like a lift ?" the 
vague meaning of which was elucidated by the pointing 
of his whip toward the wagon. 

Alma assented, and with the wagoner's assistance soon 
found herself, with all her merchandise, comfortably 
installed in the great wagon, which was empty save for a 
few household and farming necessaries from Oldport. 
Before mounting — a feat, by the way, not unworthy of a 
gymnast — she stroked the wheel horse's thick silken coat 
admiringly. 

“You do take care of your horses at Malbourne, Wil- 
liam," she said. “ I heard father say this morning he 
never saw a better-groomed and handsomer team than 
yours." 

William went on silently arranging Alma's seat, and 
stowing her parcels for her; but a smile dawned at the 
corners of his mouth, and gradually spread itself over the 
whole of his face, and his pleasure at length found a 
vent, when he reached the ground, in a sounding thwack 


12 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


of his broad hand on the wheeler’s massive flank — a 
thwack that set the bells a-tremble on the horse’s neck, 
and sent a sympathetic shiver of music through all the 
emulous brotherhood. 

“ Ah,” he observed, with a broad smile of admiration 
along the line of softly swaying tails and gently moving 
heads, with their nostrils steaming in the cold air, “he 
med well say that.” 

“Ah,” echoed Jem, the satellite, removing the sledge 
mallet from the wheel and striding to the front, with a 
reflection of his chief’s pleasure in his ruddy face as he 
glanced affectionately at the team, “that he med.” 

It was not Alma’s admiration which evoked such satis- 
faction — she was but a woman, and naturally could not 
tell a good horse from a donkey; but her father, Ben 
Lee, Sir Lionel Swaynestone’s coachman, a man who had 
breathed the air of stables from his cradle, and who drove 
the splendid silk-coated, silver-harnessed steeds in the 
Swaynestone carriages, his opinion was something. With 
a joyous crack of the whip, and a strange sound from 
the recesses of his throat, William bid his team “Gee- 
up!” 

The mighty hoofs took hold of the road, the great 
wheels slowly turned, a shower of confused harmony fell 
in dropping sweetness from the bells, and with creaking 
and groaning, and nodding heads, and rhythmic blending 
of paces and music, the wagon lumbered ponderously 
along the level chalk road, which led, uninclosed by 
hedge or fence, over the open down. 

To ride m a wagon with ease, and at the same time 
enjoy the surrounding landscape without a constant exer- 
cise of gymnastic skill in balancing and counter-balancing 
the body in response to the heavy sway and jerking of the 
unwieldy machine, is difficult; to sit on the ledge is to be 
an acrobat; to lie on the floor is to see nothing but sky, 
besides having one’s members violently wrenched one 
from the other. Alma, however, was very comfortably 
placed on a pile of sacks, which served as an arm-chair, 
deadened the jerking power of the motion, and left her 
head and shoulders above the ledge, so that she could 
well see the gray surrounding landscape in the deepening 
haze. 

She leaned back with a feeling of agreeable languor. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 15 

the park by the roadside; and the large horn lantern was 
handed to Alma to aid her in gathering her parcels 
together, and its light fell upon her bright dark eyes, 
and rosy, dimpled cheeks, making her appear more than 
ever as if her gaudy dress was but a disguise assumed for 
a frolic. Her almond-shaped, rather melancholy eyes 
sparkled as she looked in the young carter's stolid face, 
and thanked him heartily. 

“ I have had such a nice ride," she added, pleasantly, 
and the horses one by one dropped a bell-note or two to 
emphasize her words. 

“ You must gie I a toll for this yere ride," returned 
William, with a look of undisguised, but not rude admi- 
ration. 

Alma flushed, and drew back. “ How much do you 
want?" she asked, taking out her purse, and pretending 
not to understand. 

“You put that there in your pocket." he replied, 
offended, “and gie I a kiss." 

“Indeed, I shall do nothing of the kind," retorted 
Alma. “ Let me get down. I'll never ride with you 
again, if I walk till I drop — that I won't." 

But the wagoner insisted on his toll, and vowed that 
she should not descend till it was paid; and poor Alma 
protested and stormed vainly, whilst Jem leaned up 
against a horse and laughed, and adjured her to make 
haste. Alma burst into tears, wrung her hands, and 
wished that she had not been so obdurate to poor Charlie 
Judkins. He would not have been so rude, she knew. 
Nor, indeed, would William have been so persistent had 
she not offended him by her unlucky offer of money, and 
roused the dogged obstinacy of his class. She darted to 
the other side of the wagon, but in vain; William was too 
quick, and she was just on the point of raising her voice, 
in the hope that her father might be near, when a light, 
firm step was heard issuing from the park gates, and a 
clear and singularly musical voice broke into the dispute 
with a tone of authority. 

“ For shame, William Grove! " it said. “ How can you 
be so cowardly? Let the girl go directly. Why, it is 
Alma Lee, surely!" 


16 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


CHAPTER II. 

The speaker emerged into the little circle of light cast 
by the lantern — a slight, well-built, youthful figure of 
middle height, yet commanding presence, clad in dark 
gray, with a round, black straw hat and a neat white 
necktie, the frequent costume of a country curate in 
those days, when the clerical garb had not reached so 
high a stage of evolution as at present. His beardless 
face made him look still younger than he really was; his 
features were refined and clearly cut; his hair very dark; 
and his eyes, the most striking feature of his face, were 
of that rare, dazzling light blue which can only be com- 
pared to a cloudless, noon sky in June, when the pale, 
intense blue seems penetrated to overflowing with floods 
of vivid light. 

“I waren't doing no harm,” returned the wagoner, 
with a kind of surly respect; “I gied she a ride, and she 
med so well gie I a kiss.” 

“ And you a married man! ” cried the indignant young 
deacon; “ for shame!” 

“ There ain't no harm in a kiss,” growled William with 
a sheepish, discomfited look, while he stood aside and 
suffered the newcomer to help Alma in her descent. 

“ There is great harm in insulting a respectable young 
woman, and taking advantage of her weakness. As for a 
kiss, it is not a seemly thing between young people who 
have no claim on each other, though there may be no 
positive harm in it. You ought to know better, 
William.” 

“ There ain't no harm for the likes of we,” persisted 
the wagoner. “'Tain't as though Alma was a lady; she's 
only a poor man's daughter.” 

“And a poor man's daughter has as much right to 
men's respect as a duchess,” cried the young fellow, with 
animation. “ I wonder you can say such a thing, Grove. 
And you a poor man yourself, with a little daughter of 
your own! How would you like her to be kissed against 
her will?” 

William muttered to the effect that “Anybody med 
kiss she ” — which was true enough, as she had seen but 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


17 


three summers yet — and went on twining his whip with a 
cowed, injured look, while Alma gazed in awed admira- 
tion at her handsome young champion, whose kindling 
eyes seemed to send forth floods of pale-blue light in the 
gloom. 

“ There is something so unmanly in attacking a girl's 
self-respect,” continued the eager champion. “ I did not 
think you capable of it, William. A stout fellow like 
you, a man I always liked. Go home to your wife, and 
think better of it. I will see you across the meadow 
myself, Alma, though it is hard that a girl cannot be 
abroad alone at this hour.” 

So saying, the young Bayard possessed himself of sun- 
dry of Alma's parcels, and with a pleasant “ Good-night, 
Jem,” turned his back on the wagon and opened the 
gate, through which Alma passed quickly, followed by her 
protector, while the cumbrous wagon went on its way to 
the rhythmic jangle of the sweetly clashing bells, and 
William trudged stolidly on with his accustomed whip- 
crackings and guttural exclamations, murmuring from 
time to time with a mortified air, “ There ain't no harm 
in a kiss!” And, indeed, he meant no harm, though he 
took care not to relate the incident to his wife; it was 
only his rough tribute to Alma's unaccustomed beauty, 
and signified no more than a gracefully turned allusion 
in higher circles. “And Mr. Cyril must go a-spiling of 
she,” he added, “as though she didn't look too high 
already. But pride goes before a fall, as I've heerd 'un 
say.” Ominous repetition of Judkins's words! 

Alma, in the mean time, murmured her thanks to her 
chivalrous protector, and stepped up the dewy meadow 
with a beating breast and a flushing cheek, her ears ting- 
ling with the words, “ A poor man's daughter has as 
much right to respect as a duchess,” her heart swelling at 
the memory of the courtesy with which Maitland handed 
her down from the wagon and carried half her parcels; 
she knew that a veritable duchess would not have been 
treated with more honor. All her life she had known 
Cyril Maitland. She had sported with him over that 
very lea, where the tall yellow cowslips nodded in spring, 
and where they had pelted each other with sweet, heavy 
cowslip-balls; she had kissed and cuffed him many a 
time, though he was always “Master Cyril” to the coach- 


18 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


man’s child; and as they grew up, had been inclined to 
discuss him with a half-respectful, half-familiar dispar- 
agement, such as well-known objects receive. Never till 
that fatal evening had his grace of mind and person and 
the singular charm of his manner keenly touched her. 
But when he stood there in the lantern’s dim rays, look- 
ing so handsome and so animated by the impulsive chiv- 
alry with which he defended her, and she heard the 
musical tones and refined accents of the voice pleading 
her cause and the cause of her sex and her class, a new 
spirit came to her — a spirit of sweetness and of terror, 
which set all her nerves quivering, and opened a new 
world of wonder and beauty to her entranced gaze. As 
holy as a young archangel, and as beautiful, he seemed to 
the simple girl’s dazzled thoughts, and she felt that no 
harm could ever come to her in that charmed presence, 
no pain ever touch her. 

All unconscious of the tumult of half-conscious emo- 
tion awakening beside him, Cyril Maitland walked on, 
chatting with pleasant ease on all sorts of homely topics, 
in nowise surprised at his companion’s faltering, inco- 
herent replies, which lie attributed to the embarrassment 
from which he had just delivered her. The dulcet clash- 
ing of the bells grew fainter, and then rose on a sudden 
gust of wind just as they reached the door of the 
strangely built white house, before the square windows of 
which rose a small colonnade of white pillars. Alma 
opened the door, and a ruddy glow rushed out upon her, 
while within a cheerful little home-scene presented itself. 
A small table, covered with a clean white cloth, touched 
with rose by the firelight, and spread with tea-things, was 
drawn up before the glowing hearth, and a warm aroma 
of tea and toast greeted the tired, hungry girl. Before 
the fire sat a strong, middle-aged man in an undress 
livery, consisting partly of a sleeved waistcoat, busily 
engaged in making toast; while a neatly dressed woman 
moved about the warm parlor, adding a few touches to 
the table. 

“Just in time, Alma,” called out the man, without 
turning his head. 

“ And. a pretty time, too,” added the woman, who was 
Alma’s step-mother. “Why hadn’t you ’a come along 
with Charlie Judkins this hour agone? Gadding about 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


19 


till it’s dark night — 0 Mr. Cyril, I beg your pardon, 

sir!” and she dropped a courtesy, while her husband 
turned, and rose. 

“May I come in?” asked Cyril, pausing, hat in hand, 
and smiling his genial smile. “ Your tea is ven T tempt- 
ing, Mrs. Lee.” 

“Come in and welcome. Master Cyril,” said the coach- 
man, as Cyril, with the air of an accustomed guest, 
placed his hat on a side-table adorned with the family 
Bible, work-boxes, and tea-trays, and took the chair Mrs. 
Lee handed him. 

“Why, I've not had tea with you for an age,” continued 
Cyril, stroking a large tabby cat, which sprung purr- 
ing upon his knee the moment he was seated; “and I 
don't deserve any now, since I come straight from the 
drawing-room at Swaynestone, where the rites of the 
teapot were being celebrated. But the ladies there have 
no idea of tea-making, and I only had two cups, and was 
tantalized with a vague sketch of a piece of bread and 
butter.” 

“ Well, you always were a rare one for tea, Master 
Cyril,” returned his hostess. “ If I had but known you 
were coming. I'd 'a made some of them hot cakes. But 
there's jam in plenty, some blackberry as Alma made this 
fall.” 

“ Alma came by Long's wagon,” he explained, when 
she had withdrawn to lay aside her hat and shawl; “and 
as I chanced to be at the gate when she got down, I saw 
her across the meadow.” 

“ Thank 'ee kindly. Master Cyril. 1 don't like her to 
be out alone at nights,” said Ben Lee, “ though, to be 
sure, there's only our own people about on the estate.” 

Before Alma's mind there arose a vision of the Swayne- 
stone drawing-room as she had seen it once at tea-time 
when she was summoned to speak to the young ladies 
about some needlework she was doing for them. She 
saw in imagination the long range of windows with their 
rich curtains; the mirrors and couches; the cabinets 
filled with rare and costly bric-a-brac; the statuettes and 
pictures; the painted ceiling of the long, lofty room; the 
beautiful chimney-piece of sculptured Parian marble; 
the rich glow from the hearth throwing all kinds of 
warm reflections upon the splendid apartment, and prin- 


20 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


cipally upon the little table, laden with silver and price- 
less china, by the fire; and the charming group of ladies 
in their stylish dress and patrician beauty, half-seen in 
the fire-lit dusk. It was a world of splendor to Alma's 
unaccustomed eyes — a place in which an ordinary mortal 
could in no wise sit down with any comfort, without, in- 
deed, a something almost amounting to sacrilege; a 
world in which the perfume of hot-house flowers took 
away the bated breath, and in which no footfall dared 
echo; where voices were low and musical, and manners 
full of courteous ease; a world inhabited by beings un- 
touched by common cares, with other thoughts, and 
softer, more beautifully adorned lives; a world which 
Alma entered with a burdensome sense of being out of 
place, in which she only spoke when spoken to, and 
where she heard herself discussed as if she were a thing 
without hearing. 

“What! is this Lee's daughter?" Lady Swaynestone 
had asked, putting up her gold-rimmed glasses, and tak- 
ing a quiet survey of Alma and her blushes. 

“ Surely you remember little Alma Lee, mother," 
Ethel Swaynestone replied. “She has shot up, you see, 
like the rest of us." 

“Ah, to be sure! How the time goes, Ethel! How is 
your mother, Alma? And she is embroidering Maude's 
handkerchiefs? A very nice employment for a young 
woman. But I don't like her gown; it is far too smart 
for a coachman's daughter." 

“Nonsense, mother dear. Why shouldn't she be 
smart, if she likes? But if you want really to look nice, 
Alma, you must not wear violet and pale blue together," 
said the fair-haired Maude, with a sweet look of interest 
in Alma's appearance that won her heart, wounded as it 
was by “ her ladyship's " want of consideration. 

Very glad was Alma to retire from that august pres- 
ence — almost as glad as she had been to enter it. And 
Mr. Cyril had walked straight from the splendid apart- 
ment, from the light of Miss Ethel and Miss Maude's 
eyes, and the sound of their sweet, cultured voices, with 
a disparaging remark upon their tea, and chosen Alma's 
own humble everyday dwelling and homely meal in the 
narrow room in preference. This filled" her with a 
strange, indefinable emotion, half pleasure and half pain. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 21 

Some instinct told her that he was the same welcomed, 
admired guest there as here; that he spoke with the same 
easy charm to Lady Swaynestone and her daughters and 
the high-born visitors he chanced to meet there as to her 
parents and herself. And could her imagination have 
borne her into Cyril's future, she would have seen him, 
as he subsequently was, a welcomed frequent guest at 
royal tables, where his beautiful voice and perfect man- 
ner cast the same glamour over the palace atmosphere as 
over that of the coachman's little dwelling. 

Quickly as Alma returned to the parlor, she yet found 
time to arrange her rich hair and add a necklace of amber 
beads, thus imparting a kind of gypsy splendor to her 
dark face, and other little trifles to her dress; and very 
handsome she looked in the fire-light — for the one candle 
but emphasized the gloom — with that new sparkle in her 
eyes and flush on her cheek. It was Cyril who recom- 
mended her to toast the sausages she had brought from 
Oldport instead of frying them; he and Lilian had often 
cooked them so in the school-room at home, he said, 
when Mrs. Lee demurred at trusting to his culinary skill. 
It was Cyril also who suggested the agreeable addition of 
cold potatoes warmed up. 

“ Well, Master Cyril, I never thought to see you teach 
my wife cooking," laughed Ben, paying a practical com- 
pliment to his skill. “ Hand Master Cyril some tea, 
Alma; and do you taste the sausages, my girl. Why, 
where's your appetite after tramping all the way into 
Oldport, and nothing but a bit of bread and cheese since 
breakfast? You sha'n't walk there and back again any 
more; that and the shopping is too much. And so you 
came along part of the way in Long's wagon, when you 
might have been tooled along by the best horse in our 
stables, and Judkins fit to cry about it. Now, don't you 
call that silly, Mr. Cyril?" 

“ Every one to his taste, Ben. I prefer the dog-cart." 

“And it ain't every day a girl like Alma gets a chance 
of riding behind such a horse or beside such a young 
man," added Mrs. Lee, severely. “But there's people as 
never knows where their bread's buttered." 

“ There are people," said Alma, with a toss of her 
graceful head, “ as know what they've a mind to do, and 
do it." 


22 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


“ And there’s headstrong girls as lives to repent,” 
retorted the step-mother. 

“ Ay, you was always a wilful one, Alma,” said her 
father; “ but if you don’t look out you’ll be an old maid, 
and you won’t like that. And a smarter fellow than 
Charlie Judkins never crossed a horse. No drink with 
Charlie — goes to church regular, and has a matter of 
fifty pound in the bank, and puts by every week. And 
Sir Lionel ready to find him a cottage and raise his wages 
when he marries.” 

4 ‘ Well, let him marry, then,” returned Alma, airily; 
“ I don’t want to prevent him. I dare say Mr. Cyril 
would be kind enough to perform the ceremony, if he 
wished it.” 

“ I should have the greatest pleasure, Alma, particularly 
if he chose a certain friend of mine. For, as your father 
says, Charlie is a really good fellow, as warm-hearted a 
man as I know, and deserves a good wife.” 

“ There are plenty of good wives to be had,” returned 
Alma; “no doubt Mr. Judkins will soon find one, 
especially as he has so many friends to put in a word for 
him.” 

“Ay, and he might have the pick of girls in Malbourne, 
and five miles round,” added Mrs. Lee. 

“And Charlie won’t stand Alma’s hoity-toity airs 
much longer,” chimed in her father. “ He was terrible 
angry this afternoon, and talked about stuck-up faggots, 
he did. And you rising twenty-two, and refused Mr. 
Ingram’s own man. I don’t know what’d be good enough 
for ye, Alma, I don’t, without ’twas Mr. Ingram hisself. 
Ain’t she a wilful one, Mr. Cyril ? ” 

“We mustn’t be hard upon her, Ben. She has a right 
to refuse a man if she doesn’t care for him. But any 
girl might think twice before refusing Charlie Judkins,” 
said Cyril, in his gentle, gracious way. “ I was to tell 
you, Mrs. Lee,” he added, “that we are running short 
of eggs at the rectory, and ask if your fowls were laying 
enough to spare?” 

“ Ourn have mostly give over laying, but Mrs. Mait- 
land shall have a dozen so soon as Alma can get over 
to-morrow. Why, you don’t bide at the rectory now, 
sir?” 

“ No. I have rooms in my own parish at Shotover,” 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 23 

he replied; “but I am always running in and out at 
home. It is only a mile and a half, you know; and Shot- 
over is such a tiny parish, it leaves us very idle.” 

“That’s well for your- book-learning, Mr. Cyril. I 
reckon you have to know a good deal more before you can 
be priested next Trinity. When are ye coming over to 
Malbourne to preach to we?” 

“ Oh, not for a long while, Ben. I feel as if I could 
never have the assurance to preach to all you grave and 
reverend seigniors. I don’t even preach at Shotover if I 
can help it,” he replied with an air of ingenuous modesty 
that became him well. 

“You mun get over that, sir,” continued Ben, “You 
mun think of Timothy. He was to let no man despise 
his youth, you mind.” 

“ Certainly, Ben. But I have only been ordained 
three months, and I may well hold my tongue till I have 
learned a little wisdom. Ah, Ben, you can’t imagine 
what a dreadful ordeal it is to preach one’s first sermon ! 
I feel cold water running down my back when I think of 
it. They say my face was whiter than my surplice, and my 
voice sounded so loud and strange in my ears I thought 
it must frighten people, instead of which they could 
scarcely hear me.” 

“ Lauk-a-mercy, Mr. Cyril, you’ll soon get over that,” 
said Mrs. Lee in a tone of consolation. “That’s just 
how I felt the first time i acted parlor maid, Jane being 
took ill, and a party to dinner, and I housemaid. You 
mid ’a seen the glasses knock up agen the decanter when 
I filled them, the jellies all a-tremble with the palpita- 
tions — not to mention the first time I walked into Mal- 
bourne Church with Lee, and made sure I should ’a 
dropped every step I took up the aisle, and all them boys 
staring, and your pa beginning ‘ the wicked man!’ But 
law! I thinks nothing of it now.” 

“You may still hear my teeth chatter in Shotover 
Church, nevertheless, Mrs. Lee,” replied Cyril, softly 
stroking the cat, which still nestled purring on his knee, 
and casting an amused glance on Mrs. Lee and on Alma, 
whose face expressed the most sympathetic interest. 
“But, as you say, I shall get over it in time. And, 
indeed, if the congregation consisted of Alma, and Lilian, 
and Mr. Ingram Swaynestone, and his sisters, I shouldn’t 


24 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


mind preaching at Malbourne. Fellow-sinners of my 
own age are not so appalling.” 

“ Ay, with a head like yourn, you med be a bishop 
some day,” observed Lee, thoughtfully. “What’s this 
yere thing they made ye at college? somat to do with 
quarreling?” 

“A wrangler.” 

“Ah! You may depend upon it, it's a fine thing to be 
a wrangler. Mr. Ingram, now, they only made he a rus- 
tic; but he was at t’other place — Oxford, they calls it.” 

“He was rusticated,” said Cyril, gravely. “That is 
not so advantageous as being made a wrangler.” 

“ You see, I was right, after all, mother,” Alma inter- 
posed; “and you always would have it that Mr. Cyril was 
a mangier. As if they had mangles at Cambridge!” 

“ You’d better be less forward with your tongue, and 
get on with your vittles, miss. Why, bless the girl, 
she’s eat nothing, and if that ain’t the third time she’ve 
put sugar into the milk-jug by mistake! Why, father, 
whatever’s come to her?” 

Alma blushed prettily, but her confusion almost 
amounted to distress; and Cyril, with his ready tact, 
again drew attention from her. 

“You must not imagine,” he said, “that I have to 
pass my time in strife and dissension because I am a 
wrangler. Quite the contrary. Thank you for the tea, 
Mrs. Lee. Good-night, Ben; ” and, placing the cat very 
gently on the warm hearth, and shaking hands with his 
hosts, Cyril rose, took his hat, and followed Alma out 
into the darkness. 

She bore the candle, and by its light guided him to the 
little wicket at the end of the garden, where, with a 
courtesy, she bid him good-night. 

“ Good-night, Alma,” he returned, carelessly, and 
stepped briskly down the dark meadow, the grass of 
which was crisped now by frost; while Alma remained 
at the wicket, that he might have the benefit of the can- 
dle’s feeble ray. 

When he was half-way across, he suddenly stopped and 
turned. 

“Oh, Alma ! ” he cried, retracing his steps, when she 
looked up with startled inquiry in his face, “ I quite for- 
got the very thing I came for!” Here he paused, over- 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 25 

come with surprise at the vivid, tense expression of 
Alma’s bright face, and a ray of illumination shot over 
the something he had observed in the house, the absent 
manner and the lack of appetite, and accounted for her 
disparagement of the enamored Judkins. By these signs 
lie knew that Alma was in love with some other swain. 
“I quite forgot Miss Lilian’s message to you. My sister 
is getting up a Bible-class for young women, and she 
wishes you to join. She is to hold it in her room at the 
rectory after even-song on Sunday afternoon. Will you 
come ?” 

“ Oh, I don’t know, Mr. Cyril! You see, I should be 
dark home these winter nights,” returned Alma, hesitat- 
ing and blushing, and looking up at Cyril and down on 
the frosted grass and up again. 

“Well, you can talk it over with Miss Lilian when you 
bring the eggs. I think we might get over the difficulty 
of getting home in the dark. If that was all, I might see 
you home myself.” 

“ Oh, Mr. Cyril!” 

There was a quiver and flash and illumination in the 
words and look of the simple, unconscious girl which 
shot like electric flame through her interlocutor’s frame, 
and made him speechless. The blue radiance from his 
eyes mingled for a moment with the dark fire of Alma’s, 
and a strange, unaccustomed tremor, that was not all 
pain, set his pulses beating as they were not used to beat, 
and stirred all the currents of his blood. 

“ Good-night, Alma,” he said, shortly, and in a voice 
so unlike his own that the girl stood petrified in pained 
amazement; and he turned, and sped swiftly over the 
crisp grass to the gate, glad to be out of the influence of 
the solitary candle’s dim light. 

He let the gate fall to with a clash which made it 
vibrate backward and forward for some minutes before it 
found rest, and strode rapidly over the dark highway 
beneath the trees. 

“What have I done?” he muttered with a beating 
heart. “Oh, my God! I meant no harm. What have I 
done?” 

Yet the warm, delicious glow still lingered, paining 
him, in his breast, and he strode on with his head bent 
down, humbled and wretched. His soul was yet spot- 


26 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


less as the untrodden snow; all his hopes and tastes were 
innocent; the fierce flame of temptation had never yet 
cast its scorching glare upon him, hitherto he had deemed 
himself invulnerable. In his trouble, he put his hand 
instinctively in his pockets, where nestled as usual the 
rubbed covers of his “Visitations and Prayers for the 
Sick,” and other devotional books, and was comforted. 
He lifted his head, and felt in his breast-pocket for a 
letter, the pressure of which, though he could not read it 
beneath that dark dome of solid night, fully restored the 
serenity to his face. It began, “Dearest Cyril,” and 
ended, “Ever affectionately yours, Marion Everard;” it 
alluded to the pains of separation, and the hopes ex- 
pressed by Cyril of a possible marriage in a year’s time. 

They had been engaged a whole year, and the necessity 
of waiting another year before marriage was the tragedy 
of their young lives. A year seemed an eternity to them, 
and the life they passed apart from each other no life. 
A vision of Marion’s gentle face brightened the curtain 
of thick darkness spread before Cyril. He recalled her 
tones and looks with a rush of sweet affection — all the 
tender looks she had ever given him, and they were 
many; but he could not recall any one look that resem- 
bled the glance of fervid, unquenchable passion which 
flashed from Alma’s tell-tale eyes in that fatal moment at 
the gate. Such a look he had beheld in no woman’s 
eyes; such a look, he feared, in the narrowness of his 
serene purity, could light no good woman’s eyes. 

He was wrong. The flame which burned in poor, 
innocent Alma’s breast, and which her guileless nature so 
rashly and unconsciously betrayed, descended like a 
celestial glory upon her life with a purifying and strength- 
ening power, which could have lifted her to unimagined 
summits of heroism. 

There are people whose lives are never touched by pas- 
sion, and who, when they come in contact with it, recog- 
nize only its strength, which they dread, and condemn its 
mysteries as baleful. Such was Cyril in these white 
young days of his before any shadow fell upon his sunny, 
safe path. Such was not Cyril in after-days, when the 
agony of the penitent and the evil-doer found a responsive 
echo in his heart, and made him pitiful and lenient in 
judging character and discriminating motives. But to- 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


2 ? 


night, in spite of the momentary glow for which he so 
despised himself, he drew the robe of the Pharisee about 
his upright soul, and cast a stone of condemnation upon 
the sufferer as he passed her swiftly by. 

Alma remained statue-like, with her solitary light 
painting a feeble halo on the all-encompassing gloom, 
until Cyril’s steps had ceased to echo along the lonely 
highway, and her mother called to her to bring back the 
candle and shut the door. 

As soon as she had obeyed, she found a pretext for 
going to her room, and there, sitting down on the edge of 
the bed in the dark, she burst into tears. 

“I am tired, and William Grove frightened me,” she 
said to herself; and a few minutes later she was at needle- 
work in the parlor, singing like any wild bird. 


CHAPTER III. 

A warm glimmer of ruddy light on the thick darkness 
told Cyril of the approach of the wheelwright’s house 
and shop, and, passing this and descending the hill, he 
became aware of the rich crimson which marked the 
lower windows of the Sun Inn, and found himself at the 
end of the wheelwright’s yard, at the meeting of four 
roads. Opposite the Sun, and colored by its light, a sign- 
post reared itself at the corner, oblique and appearing to 
gesticulate madly with its outspread arms. This corner 
turned, all the village sparkled out in a little constella- 
tion of cottage casements before his gaze; and there, 
beyond the brook, which murmured faintly in the still- 
ness, the rectory windows shone out among masses of 
foliage, or rather of branches, behind which the gray 
church spire lifted itself unseen in the mirk. As soon as 
Cyril’s foot was within the gate, a sudden illumination 
from the hall door, which simultaneously opened, poured 
itself upon the drive, and showed him the outline of a 
woman’s young and graceful figure in the porch. 

“Did you hear me coming, Lilian?” asked he, enter- 
ing the house. “ Your hearing must indeed be acute.” 

“Did we hear him, Mark Antony?” echoed Lilian, 


28 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


addressing a magnificent black cat, with white breast and 
paws, which had been sitting upon the step at her feet, 
and gazing with grave expectancy down the drive till 
Cyril reached the door, when he rose, and respectfully 
greeted him with elevated tail and gentle mews, inter- 
spersed with purring. “ You know that puss and I have 
an extra sense, which tells us when you are coming,” she 
replied, lightly, as she passed her arm through his, and 
led him through the little hall into the drawing-room, on 
the threshold of which a terrier and a pug sprang out to 
greet the new-comer with short barks of joy and sudden 
bounds and various wild expressions of delight — an indis- 
creet behavior, quietly rebuked by two swift but dignified 
strokes of Mark Antony's white velvet paw, which sent 
the heedless animals, with dismal yelps and mortified 
tails, to a respectful distance. 

A lady lay on a sofa near the fire, and a boy and a girl 
of some eight and nine years rolled on the hearth-rug 
with some toys. These children, with Cyril and Lilian, 
who were twins, constituted the sole remainder of Mrs. 
Maitland's once too numerous family. What with bear- 
ing and rearing them all, and the sorrow of losing so 
many, her strength was now exhausted, and the prime of 
her life was passed chiefly on that sofa, among its warm 
rugs. Cyril bent to kiss her and a look of pride and joy 
lighted her pale, refined face as she gazed upon him. 

The children sprang upon Cyril, and he, having 
caressed them, took a seat by Lilian, who was at the 
writing-table, from which she had risen on his approach. 

“Will it do?'' he asked, gazing upon some manu- 
script before her. 

“I think so,” she replied. “I have drawn a line 
through the most ornate passages. But you must really 
try and adapt yourself to your congregation, Cyril. This 
goes completely over their heads. " Be less elaborate, and 
speak from your heart, simply and honestly.” 

“The discipline which turns out Wranglers,” observed 
Cyril, with a dry little smile, “does not train popular 
rustic preachers.” 

“Cyril's sermons again?” asked Mrs. Maitland. 
“ Lilian should compose them entirely, I think. And 
yet I am w T rong, for I doubt if either of you could do any- 
thing without the other.” 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


29 


The twins smiled, knowing this to be perfectly true. 
They were alike, and yet different. Lilian's features 
were fuller than Cyril's ; her eyes softer and of a gray 
color, hut they met the gazer with an even more powerful 
electric thrill than Cyril's light blue orbs ; her hair was 
many shades lighter than her brother's ; and while Cyril 
could not appear in any assembly without exciting inter- 
est and drawing all eyes to himself, Lilian had a pecul- 
iar manner of pervading places without attracting the 
slightest observation. Gradually one became aware of 
an influence, and only after a long time discovered the 
personage from whom it emanated. 

No one ever praised Lilian's beauty, though she pos- 
sessed all the elements of loveliness. She shared Cyril's 
musical voice, but lacked its more powerful and penetrat- 
ing tones. Cyril had beautifully shaped hands, but 
Lilian's were like two fair spirits, and formed the only 
striking part of her personality; they were the first thing 
the stranger observed in her, and, once observed, they 
were never for a moment forgotten. The twins had 
shared everything from their babyhood. The same tutor 
demanded equal tasks of brother and sister; and when 
Cambridge separated them, Lilian still followed the 
course of her brother's studies, and would doubtless have 
been a high wrangler, had she been submitted to the 
same tests as he. The peculiar bond between them was 
respected and acknowledged even by Mark Antony, who 
was, as his mistress frequently observed, a cat of consid- 
erable force of character. Besides Lilian, Cyril was the 
only human being Mark Antony ever followed or fawned 
upon, and it was supposed that his very strong affections 
were entirely bestowed upon the twins. 

To strangers this cat was haughtily indifferent; and, if 
a visitor took such a liberty as to stroke his ebon fur, 
would rise and walk away with offended majesty. To 
the family he observed a distant but eminently courteous 
demeanor; to the servants he was condescending; to the 
children polite, but never familiar, their respectful 
caresses being received with dignified resignation, and 
never suffered to go beyond a certain point; his bearing 
to the dogs was that of a despot. He was a great war- 
rior, and suffered no other cat to intrude so much as a 
paw on the rectory grounds: hence his name. 


30 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


He never left Lilian while she was in the house, and 
at certain seasons exacted games of play from her, scorn- 
ing to play with any one else, save occasionally when he 
unbent so far as to entangle himself wildly in Winnie’s 
curls, to the great consternation of the dogs. But Cyril 
might do anything with him, and could never do wrong. 
In this, Mark Antony differed from his mistress, since 
Cyril was the only person with whom she ever quar- 
relled, the two having had many a pitched battle in theii 
childhood, though they always stood up for each other to 
such an extent that, if one was punished by the depriva- 
tion of pudding, the other was permitted to go on half 
rations with the delinquent, and to give one an orange 
meant to give each half a one. 

“Did you tell him that the Everards were here this 
afternoon?” Mrs. Maitland added, the personal pro- 
noun being considered sufficient indication to Lilian of 
her brother, while “ her ” in addressing Cyril was known 
to mean Lilian. 

“ Were they, indeed? and I away, of course,” grumbled 
Cyril. 

“You may guess Marion’s message,” laughed Lilian, 
in a low aside, at which Cyril looked pleased. 

“Well, mother, and the news?” he added. 

“ Henry’s long silence is satisfactorily explained.” 

“ Satisfactorily? Oh, mother! and he has been at 
death’s door! ” inturrupted Lilian. 

“111?” Everard? I knew there must be something 
very serious,” ejaculated Cyril. “ But he is better? ” 

“He is convalescent, dear. He is a noble, unselfish 
fellow, as I always knew when he was but a tiny boy! 
He would not let his friends be written to until he was 
completely out of danger. There was a child danger- 
ously ill of scarlet fever in some dreadful court in Seven 
Dials. He was too ill to be moved, and had a bad drunken 
mother, and Henry watched him for several nights, 
relieving guard with a day nurse. By the time the child 
was out of danger Henry was raving — ” 

“ Then, why,” interrupted Cyril, with agitation, “were 
we not told?” 

“He had foreseen his delirium, and forbidden any com- 
munication till he died or recovered. He knew full well 
that nothing would have kept Marion from him, had she 
known — ” 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


31 


“ He was right! ” broke in Cyril, in a low, fervid tone, 
“ Thank Heaven that he thought of that! ” 

“ Henry always thinks of everything that may effect 
the welfare of his friends,” added Lilian, whose face wore 
a look of quiet enthusiasm, and whose dark gray eyes 
were shining with repressed tears. 

“ And now?” added Cyril, with energy. “ They will 
not let Marion go to him now I hope. The convales- 
cent stage is the most infectious.” 

“ They will not meet until Henry is perfectly free 
from infection. You may trust Henry for that, Cyril.” 

“ He has been very ill,” said Lilian; “ they feared he 
would be both blind and deaf. It will be months before 
he can recover, though the infectious stage is already 
nearly past.” 

.“Poor old Everard! that will be a terrible trial for 
him with his ambition. Time is so precious to a man 
who is beginning his career.” 

“ I suspect he has been working too hard,” said Mrs. 
Maitland, “ and the enforced rest to his brain may bene- 
fit him more than they think. Admiral Everard is 
ordered to the Mediterranean with the squadron in a few 
weeks* time, and, a winter abroad being necessary for 
Henry, he is to go in the ‘ Cressy * to Malta, from whence 
he will afterward go to other places — Egypt and the Holy 
Land among them — and Marion is to be his companion.” 

“Marion ? What ! Marion spend the winter abroad ? 
Impossible ! She shall not go.” 

“ You are not married yet, Cyril/* said Lilian laugh- 
ing. 

“My dear boy, why should Marion not go ?** asked 
his mother in surprise. “ She is delighted at the pros- 
pect. It is perhaps the only chance she will have of 
going abroad for any length of time. Once married, a 
girl cannot see much of the world, as the admiral says, 
and a country curat As wife is especially bound to home.” 

“And do you suppose, mother, that I shall always be 
a country curate?” asked Cyril, with fire. “No, in- 
deed. My wife will have as many opportunities of seeing 
the world as any one, I trust. But she cannot, she must 
not leave me all this winter. I simply cannot spare 
her.” 

“ And Henry — can he spare her ? ** asked Lilian. 


32 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


“She is not engaged to Henry. Let Henry get a wife 
of his own.” 

“My dear Cyril, how absurdly you talk ! ” said Mrs. 
Maitland. “ You forget that Henry is an invalid, and 
will need his sister's care. And you forget, too, that 
Marion is looking forward with the greatest delight to 
this unexpected trip.” 

“ The only lady on board — on board a man-of-war ! ” 

“ And awful fun, too,” interposed the boy on the rug. 
“I only wish I was ill, and the admiral would take me.” 

“Well, Lennie, you would be a more appropriate p«s 
senger, certainly. The admiral had better take us all, I 
think. Snip, the terrier, and Snap, the pug, with Mark 
Antony to catch the mice and keep us in order.” 

“But Marion is not going in the ‘ Cressy,"' interposed 
Lilian. “ There was some idea of her going at first. It 
seems, however, that ladies are not supposed to sail with 
their relations.” 

“I was beginning to wonder whether the admiral pur- 
posed carrying a regular Noah's ark about with him,” 
grumbled Cyril. “And pray, how does Marion get to 
Malta, unless in the ‘ Cressy'? By balloon? or does she 
charter a vessel of her own?” 

“She goes with the Wilmots, overland by Marseilles. 
Captain Wilmot is joining his regiment at Malta. They 
stop at Paris and other places, taking it leisurely, and 
that will be delightful to Marion, who has travelled so 
little.” 

“ It seems, then, after all, that Henry will have to do 
without Marion till he reaches Malta,” said Cyril. 

“ But he will have his father, and, of course, a proper 
attendant on board. At Malta he will be thrown on his 
own resources, and will need a companion. They will 
take care of each other,” Mrs. Maitland replied, cheer- 
fully. “They think of coming home by way of Sicily.” 

“I shall go to Woodlands to-morrow, and remonstrate 
with the admiral, if he is there. I shall take the pony- 
chaise, unless you want it, Lilian.” 

“Nonsense, Cyll. You may go to the Woodlands and 
take, the pony, but you will not remonstrate with the 
admiral, or make yourself in any way obnoxious,” said 
Lilian. “ When you come to reflect, you will see what a 
charming arrangement it is for everybody. The admiral 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


33 


is the more delighted, as he thinks this voyage will make 
Henry so desperately in love with the navy that he will 
become a naval surgeon. ” 

4 ‘Hang the admiral!” observed Cyril, in his softest, 
most plaintive voice, while a droll little smile curved his 
lips. “Why doesn't somebody pity me? Isn't it hard 
lines, Mark Antony?” 

Mark Antony responded by a tiny mew. He was sit- 
ting on the writing-table between his twin favorites, the 
picture of feline bliss; his tail curled round his dainty 
white paws, his snowy breast tinted by the ruddy firelight, 
his eyes lazily closing and unclosing, while he made 
rhythmic accompaniment to their voices in deep, long- 
drawn purrs, and expressed a benevolent and condescend- 
ing interest in the conversation by occasional winks and 
movements in the direction of brother or sister, as each 
spoke. He had inspected and thoroughly sniffed Cyril's 
sermon with an air of approving criticism. 

“Mark Antony was most condescending to Marion this 
afternoon,” said Lilian; “ he not only purred affably 
when she stroked him, but even allowed her to kiss him 
on the breast.” 

Whereupon Cyril bestowed a salute on the same spot, 
commending the cat's sagacity in thus recognizing 
Marion as one of the family. Mark Antony drew him- 
self up with gratified pride, and returned his friend's 
caress by lifting his velvet paw, placing his head on one 
side with an arch, roguish expression in his sparkling 
eyes and bristled white whiskers, and chucking Cyril 
under the chin with the daintiest grace, to the envy and 
delight of the children, who worshipped this household 
divinity at a distance; the jealous disgust of the dogs, 
who were sleeping with one eye open, after the manner of 
their tribe, and growled faintly; and the admiration of 
the whole family, who knew that this delicate caress was 
never accorded save to the twins. 

“Ho one seems to have thought of me in this matter,” 
observed Cyril, stroking the delighted animal. “ I shall 
certainly stand up for my rights. This notion of sacri- 
ficing Marion, and sending her half the world over in 
charge of an invalid brother; is too detestable. Her sis- 
ters should interfere; they stand in the place of a mother 
to her.” 

3 


34 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


“ Married sisters have little influence on home affairs, 
fortunately for Marion's freedom in the choice of a hus- 
band,” Mrs. Maitland said, laughing. 

“ Well, it grows late,” said Cyril, rising. “ By the 
way, I did your errands at Lee's. The eggs and the 
pupil are to arrive to-morrow morning.” 

“I am so glad you remembered,” replied Lilian; “I 
have the greatest desire to gain some influence over Alma 
Lee. Do you know, Cyril, she is a girl of no common 
character. No one in the least suspects what that girl is 
capable of.” 

“What, Lill, have you unearthed another genius?” 
asked Cyril, carelessly. 

“Oh, no; no genius. But the next time you see her, 
observe the way in which her eye flashes, and the 
mobility of her features. Poor Alma! she is so liable 
to fall into temptation, with her beauty and ignorance, 
and passionate, undisciplined nature. There are fine 
elements in her, deep feeling, strong imagination, and 
capability of self-sacrifice. How she tended that poor 
little step-sister of hers! Lucy was fearfully afflicted. 
Her own mother shrank from her at times; but Alma, 
never. Yet she is very wayward, and so spoiled. Her 
nature is powerful for evil and good. Nothing but 
strong principle can keep such a nature straight.” 

Cyril listened, looking thoughtfully toward the fire, 
with his hand shading his eyes from its light. 

“My sister is a profound student of human nature, 
mother,” he observed, lightly. “She is right in saying 
that Miss Alma has a will of her own. — Let us hope you 
will succeed in putting a curb on this unbridled nature, 
Lilian. You are qnite right in your analysis of it. But 
I am not sure that a Bible-class is the panacea you 
imagine. To move Alma Lee, I think you must appeal 
to her affections.” 

“ She is frightfully vain, poor girl! ” interposed Mrs. 
Maitland. “ If you could induce her to dress more 
quietly, Lilian!” 

“ I am not so much afraid of her vanity, mother. As 
Cyril says, her affections must be got at, and I want to 
make my Bible-class a means to that end.” 

“Just listen to the parish priest!” laughed Cyril; 
“ she talks like a book. She is worth ten curates to my 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND.' 


35 


father. The time I have wasted, as usual ; it is past 
seven ! Good-night, Lennie. Have you earned the half- 
crown yet ? No ? Lazy fellow. You will never be able 
to own a menagerie as you wish, unless you work harder. 
You may still get the half-crown if you bring me a fable 
of La Fontaine’s, in decent Latin, remember. Winnie 
has fully earned hers, and here it is, brand new. Good- 
night, mother. Father will be home at eight, he bid me 
tell you. Good-night, Lilian.” And, having been duly 
taken leave of by the dogs, Cyril left the drawing-room, 
accompanied to the door by Lilian and Mark Antony, the 
latter flourishing his tail aloft with due ceremony, and 
remaining seated on the step at Lilian’s feet, watching 
till the young man’s form was swallowed up in the 
wintry gloom. 

€t Cyril appears anxious to be married,” Mrs. Maitland 
observed, on Lilian’s return to the drawing-room. “ It 
is a very strong attachment, and well placed, fortunately 
for the dear boy. His anxiety about Marion actually 
made him forget Henry’s peril, and the heroism which 
brought it upon him. /Love is stronger than friendship.”, 

“ Cyril is very impulsive,” replied Lilian, “ and, like 
all impulsive people, is in a desperate hurry about every- 
thing. An early marriage is the thing to give balance 
to such a temperament.” 

“ Dear child,” remonstrated her mother, “I do not 
think he needs balance. I may be a foolish old woman,” 
she added, smiling, “but I can see no fault in Cyril. 
Neither can your father. I wish he had wider scope for 
his fine talents. To cramp a young fellow of his splendid 
powers and attainments in that narrow country parish 
seems such a deplorable waste of good material. I see, 
too, that the bondage chafes him.” 

Lilian made no reply, but looked thoughtfully at the 
fire, soothing some inward perturbation by stroking and 
restroking Mark Antony, who sat purring with an expres- 
sion of imbecile rapture on her knee. 

Cyril meanwhile made his way through the foggy dark- 
ness of the country roads to his rooms in the tiny village 
where lay his cure, vexed, and cogitating upon every pos- 
sible means of keeping Marion in England. 

His dinner was ready — a simple chop, but cooked and 
served in the daintiest perfection, and accompanied by a 


36 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


bottle of claret of a delicate vintage. Some late flowers 
and a dish of autumn fruit garnished his table, all the 
appointments of which were elegant and refined. Noth- 
ing in the simple little lattice-windowed room could 
offend the most fastidious taste, though it was rather 
bare, and its easiest chair would have been full of penance 
to some people's limbs. Two proof line-engravings, after 
Raphael, were its sole adornments, unless we include a 
great many books, most of which were well bound, and a 
harmonium. His solitary meal ended, Cyril's landlady 
brought him some coffee, made as English coffee rarely is, 
and served in a lovely cup of Sevres, the gift of Marion 
Everard, and acquainted him with the fact that an old 
woman had sent three times that day, requesting him to 
come and read to her, as she was taken worse. 

“ I'll go directly," replied Cyril. “ Poor old soul! I'm 
so sorry I was out when she sent;" and he started from 
his seat to get his hat. Then it struck him that he had 
better drink the coffee while it was hot, and he sat down 
again, and fell into a reverie, experiencing the delicious 
physical languor which comes after much air and exer- 
cise and the satisfaction of a temperate appetite, and 
which is so favorable to a certain kind of mental occupa- 
tion. He looked wistfully at a volume of St. Augustine, 
which lay ready to his hand, and then at his watch. “It 
is too late for Martha Hale to-night," he reflected; “ and, 
after all, what good can I do her? Her life has been a 
combination of a martyr's and a saint's; she has the 
Bible at her fingers' ends, and caught me tripping in a 
quotation twice the other day. Her spiritual knowledge 
is such as I can only dimly guess at. I can tell her noth- 
ing that she does not know five times as well as I. Her 
daughter reads to her by the hour. She has no sins to 
confess, no doubts to calm. And it would be a sin to 
disturb her at this time of night." And he finished the 
coffee, and was soon lost in St. Augustine's “City of 
God," which he closed at last at about the time when 
Martha Hale's radiant soul flitted from its worn and suffer- 
ing tenement. Then he slept as youth sleeps, Marion's 
sweet face flitting through his dreams, and her voice 
making melody to an accompaniment of sweetly clashing 
peals of the bell-music from Long's wagon team. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


3 ? 


CHAPTER IV. 

Rather more than a year after Alma Lee's evening 
ride in the wagon, a railway carriage containing two 
travellers was speeding southward through the wintry 
air, with din and rattle and smoke, in the wake of the 
red-eyed engine, which panted, groaned, and throbbed as 
with the agony of some vexed demon. 

The travellers were men in the heyday of youth, and 
their comfortable rugs, and the array of books and papers 
with which they were surrounded in the well-padded 
carriage, marked them as among those fortunate ones of 
earth who are absolved from the labor of carefully con- 
sidering sixpences and shillings before converting them 
into things of convenience or pleasure. An odor as of 
a recently evanished cigar of fine flavor further empha- 
sized their emancipation from the slavery of petty econ- 
omies, though a practiced observer would never for a 
moment have classed them in the ranks of those gilded 
youth who are exempted from the blessed curse of labor 
and at liberty to squander the rich prime of their strength 
on pleasures and follies as they will. No; they were 
evidently two young men of the cultured middle-class 
bred in comfort if not luxury, but with their own stand- 
ing yet to make — a truly happy position for a youth of 
average thews and sinews. 

They sat in opposite corners, with their legs stretched 
out beneath their warm rugs, one looking backward at 
the swiftly receding perspective of trees and fields, vil- 
lages and farmsteads, flashing and fading on the sight; 
the other facing forward to the yet unseen, but seeing it 
not, since he was fast asleep. Fast asleep, unconscious 
and peaceful as any babe on its mother's breast, he was 
speeding on without fear to a fate which in his wildest 
dreams he could never have pictured, and which could it 
have been shadowed forth ever so dimly to him, he would 
have dismissed with laughing scorn as utterly improbable 
— nay, impossible. Yet the train rushed on with pant 
and puff and clatter, bearing him nearer and nearer to 
the hidden terror with every quiet breath he drew in his 
secure slumbers, while pleasant fancies of the present and 


38 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


warm hopes of the future wove themselves into fantastic 
images in his light dreams. His was a well-built, manly 
form, and his sleeping face, with all its placid calm, was 
full of latent energy and bright intellect; a strong, serene 
face, with firm lips and chin, the face of a man who 
could do and endure much; a face expressive of healthy 
vigor of both mind and body, though it bore traces of 
fatigue, which the soft touches of sleep were every 
moment erasing. 

His wakeful companion was a clergyman, a man whose 
mobile and finely cut features, and eyes full of intense 
blue light, were expressive of something akin to genius ; 
a man whose delicately organized nature could be touched, 
the observer would imagine, only to the finest issues. 

A world of thought and care sat on the young priest’s 
brow, and the look which he bent on the fast-receding 
fields was so profoundly sad, that it would seem as if 
happiness could never again smile on him. None of the 
layman’s calm strength and wholesome serenity were his ; 
such power as his face expressed would come in lightning 
flashes of brief but keen intensity. All nerve, fire, imag- 
ination, and feeling, was this young spirit apparently ; 
capable of descending to the lowest depths of suffering 
or rising to the very airiest summits of enthusiam. It 
was an eminently beautiful and spiritual young face, and 
one which never failed to awaken interest, if not love. 
He looked very worn and fatigued ; but no merciful wing 
of sleep came to fan the trouble from his brow, while his 
companion slept so serenely and dreamed so pleasantly. 

In one hand he held a little book with red edges; but, 
instead of consulting its pages, his eyes were bent fixedly 
on the flying wintry landscape, which, nevertheless, 
they saw not, their gaze of intense abstraction being 
turned inward upon some unspeakable sorrow. His face 
was in the shadow, while some rays of wintry sunlight 
fell upon the sleeper’s face, touched the brown mustache 
with tints of gold, and finally dazzled the closed eyes to 
wakefulness. They were very pleasant eyes when opened 
— honest hazel eyes, looking directly and kindly upon 
the world, and suggesting the sunshine of wholesome 
mirth in their depths; shrewd eyes, for they had seen 
many varieties of human being in the course of six and 
twenty years, and were not easily deceived. 


THE SILENCE OF LEAN MAITLAND. 


39 


.“Upon my word,” observed the owner of the eyes, “I 
think i must have forgotten myself for a moment, Cyril.” 

At the first sound of his voice all the sadness vanished 
from the young priest's face; the mournfully brooding 
eyes left the landscape, and flashed a gay brilliance upon 
the face in the sunshine; the finely molded lips lost their 
drooping curve in a smile; the dejected attitude became 
one of alert repose; the whole man was changed. 

“ You may have forgotten yourself, old fellow, but it 
was impossible for any one else to forget you with that 
dulcet harmony of yours resounding through the brain,” 
he replied. 

“ Come, now, that's a libel; 1 never snore,” returned 
the other, with a hearty yawn that brought the tears into 
his eyes; “and if I did, you might forgive me, since you 
were not preaching.” 

“ There are some sermons of mine just over your head, 
Everard; who knows but some lulling influence may have 
emanated from them?” 

‘“He jests at scars that never felt a wound.' You 
scoundrel, you know very well that the sleep of the just 
is murdered the moment you begin thumping the pulpit- 
cushion,” said Everard, with a banter which veiled an 
honest enthusiasm for his friend's gifts. 

“ I suppose I ought to say something neat with regard 
to the elegance with which you take off people's legs and 
tie up their arteries. But, you see, my ignorance is so 
total — ” 

“ Exactly. Genius in our profession is known only to 
the initiated, while in yours it is impossible to hide its 
light under a bushel. Lucky fellows, you parsons. Not 
the minutest spark of worth in you escapes observation.” 

“ You have hit on the weak point in our profession, 
Henry,” said Cyril, dropping his air of banter. “ Seri- 
ously, it is a very awful thing to be placed as we are in 
the full light of public observation, all our weaknesses, 
failings and errors heightened by its glare, and doing — 
oh, the smallest of them! — such .worlds and worlds of 
harm.” 

“ Stuff, Maitland! That is where you parsons err. 
You think too much of your example and influence. 
You don’t suppose, man, that we think you superior to 
human weaknesses? Not a bit of it; we should loathe 


40 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


you if we did. For goodness sake, Cyril, don’t take up 
with these superfine priestly notions. By the way, why 
didn’t you go to sleep? You look as if you wanted it 
badly enough. Have you got some infernal machine 
secreted under your waistcoat to wake you with a timely 
dig in case you succumb to nature’s weakness, according 
to the rule of St. What’s-his-name? ” 

“My dear fellow,” returned the other, with a pained 
look, “you mean no harm, but you handle certain sub- 
jects with a levity — ” 

“ Come now, Cyril, we are not treading on holy ground. 
Your conscience and feelings are in a state of hyper- 
aesthesia; you have been working too hard. I didn’t 
mean that parsons were not expected to practise what 
they preach a little more precisely than other men, or 
that any grave lapse on their part is not worse in them 
than in others. But I object to this morbid self-con- 
sciousness and conscience-searching. Surely a clergy- 
man who is honest in his faith ought to be able to lead a 
Christian life with sufficient ease to prevent him from 
torturing himself about the effect of his peccadilloes, 
which are all taken for granted on his flock.” 

“ There are no peccadilloes for us,” returned Cyril, 
with a deep sigh. “ But now, Henry, let me speak out 
my anxiety about you as a friend merely, not as a priest. 

J1 'ngs you have said lately have grieved me 



“ Oh, I know! Because I don’t believe in the devil, I 
am in a parlous state. You priests have a great tender- 
ness for that absurd old devil of yours. Beg his pardon; 
I will speak more respectfully of him in future. Drive 
on.” 

“ Your profession,” pursued Maitland, with a look 
of shocked forbearance, “ is a noble one; nay, in some 
respects it is more noble than the priesthood itself, 
though lacking the special stamp of sanctity that it 
bears. It is more noble because it involves so much 
more self-sacrifice. But it is one beset with special and 
awful dangers. Your minds are so constantly set upon 
the material, that it is no wonder if you are tempted to 
lose sight of the spiritual.” 

“That I admit,” returned Everard. 

“You risk your souls that you may heal our bodies. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


41 


and the Italian proverb, ‘ Where there are three doctors 
there are two atheists/ is daily verified.” 

“ Granted. But I am not one of the atheists, happily 
for me.” 

“Not yet; but I tremble for you, Henry. That light 
tone grows upon you. And you reason every day more 
and more from the point of view of the man of science. 
You learn more and more to distrust everything that can 
not be proved by the evidence of the senses — ■” 

“ Of reason.” 

“ It amounts to the same thing. Will you promise to 
pray against this, Henry?” asked Cyril, with intense 
supplication. 

“ My friend,” returned the other, with a slight shake 
of his body, like that a dog gives in issuing from the 
water, “you accused me just now of treating sacred 
things with levity. Now your words jar upon my sense 
of reverence, which is strangely different in a priest and 
a layman. You are accustomed, you see, to handle relig- 
ious topics freely. I am not. And as I have no words to 
express them in, I would rather leave them alone.” 

Cyril heaved a profound sigh, and was silent for some 
seconds, while Everard kindled a second cigar. 

“You think I have taken a liberty, Harry?” he asked, 
after awhile. 

“ Not in the least. Feeling as you do, you would have 
been wrong to be silent. You have but done your duty, 
old friend. Cheer up. Oh, do keep a fellow company in 
a cigar! It is holiday-time.” 

Cyril's sensitive face brightened. It was evident that 
he was extremely anxious about the effect his words 
would have on his friend's estimation of him. But he 
resolutely declined the cigar — a self-denial which fretted 
his friend as being quite a new feature in his character. 

“ You are very much changed, Maitland, during the 
past year,” he said, looking keenly at him. 

“I am indeed,” he replied, with a heavy sigh; and he 
turned the subject by pointing out the towers of a gray 
cathedral in the distance. “It is always a pleasant 
friend to meet on one's way home,” he said; and the two 
joined in admiring the massive pile, till their passage 
through a chalk cutting hid it from their sight for a 
time, and then the train slackened, the shouts of porters 


42 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


were heard, the cathedral appeared once more, and they 
glided under the roofs of the smoky station, amid a con- 
fused din of bell-ringing, door-banging, hurrying steps 
and wheels, and all the turmoil attending a brief pause 
on a main line. 

“ Belminster always had a great fascination for me,” 
observed the doctor, looking across the sea of smoke- 
wreathed roofs to the vast towers of the cathedral. 
“ Surely that serenely majestic person in gaiters is the 
bishop himself. The expression * Church dignitary ’ is 
so fit. Whoever heard of a medical dignitary, or a legal 
dignitary? Good gracious me, Maitland, what an awful 
thing it must be to be a bishop’s son! Fancy asking that 
urbane and dignified cleric to pass the wine! I should 
faint if called upon to feel a spiritual lordship’s pulse.” 

Cyril smiled as the unconscious bishop made a stately 
and solitary progress past their carriage, recognizing the 
young clergyman as he passed. 

“ He is very kind and fatherly,” he observed, as the 
train moved on. “ I wish I were still in his diocese. 
Yes, I have a great regard for Belminster. I was 
ordained there.” 

“ May you walk in the gaiters of that good old gentle- 
man, Cyril, some score of years hence, and make the 
splendid old arches of the minster ring with your elo- 
quence ! I shall settle near you — as parish doctor, mind 
— though I invent Heaven knows how many diseases, as I 
hope to do, and Europe rings with my discoveries. No 
fashionable physician business for me.” 

“ A bishop,” observed the young priest, thoughtfully, 
“ has an immense scope for action.” 

“ Here is a man,” said Everard, appealing to the win- 
dows and sides of the carriage, “ who is too honest to 
say, ‘ Nolo episcopari.’ Let us make much of this man ! 
Let us — hem ! — marry him to our sister.” 

“ This day two months,” added Maitland, “ the wed- 
ding will take place.” 

“By the way, the young minx suggested that I should 
read Tennyson’s f St. Simeon Stylites ’ at the next Penny 
Readings. The suggestion is, I suppose, intended for a 
profound joke. Rather a weak poem. Lunacy requires 
the master-mind of a Shakespeare to handle it without 
repulsiveness.” 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


43 


“l am not sure that it was lunacy,” said Cyril. 

“ Not lunacy to stand on a pillar for thirty years? My 
good fellow, when I consider the doings of the Stylites 
and the recluses of the Thebaid, I sometimes wonder if 
there was any sanity in the world in those days.” 

“ There was, at least, method in their madness, Ever- 
ard. Consider the power their austerities gained them 
over the minds of ordinary men.” 

“ Of course; many an authentic maniac has been hon- 
ored with almost divine honors in certain stages of soci- 
ety. The lust of power is a curious thing. For my part, 
I would rather be a nonentity than stand on a pillar to 
gain influence.” 

“But consider what they wanted influence for. To 
bring souls to God.” 

“So they persuaded themselves, no doubt. Of all 
things I loathe asceticism. Not so much for the spiritual 
ambition and pride that attend it, as because it is in 
reality only the other side of profligacy, or, in other 
words, an ascetic is a rake turned monk.” 

“Can a rake do better than turn monk?” 

“In my judgment, he can. He can repent, turn away 
from his wickedness, and lead a rational human life.” 

“Nay. He has made himself unworthy of those com- 
mon human enjoyments in which innocent men may 
indulge. Nothing but a life of penance can atone — ” 

“ Nothing can atone,” interrupted Everard. “Iam a 
Protestant, Cyril — a rabid Protestant, as you observed the 
other day. None of your popish penances for me. What's 
the matter? ” 

“Nothing,” replied Cyril, whose features quivered 
with pain, as he pressed his hand to his side. “At least, 
only a * stitch' I am subject to. Myself, I long for more 
austerity in the Christian life of to-day. A few eremites 
of the Thebaid type on Salisbury Plain — ” 

“I tell you what, Cyril: you must learn to moderate 
your transports in that parish of yours, or you will soon 
be in a hospital or a lunatic asylum. Subject to a stitch 
at four and twenty! It won't do. The devil fly away 
with your eremites! There are legends of some of those 
same Thebaid lunatics, who, after passing years and years 
in every species of austerity, suddenly burst their unnat- 
ural trammels in one unguarded moment, fled to the city. 


44 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 

and plunged into a very vortex of iniquity. Extremes 
meet, and Nature is a stern avenger.” 

The spasm again flitted across Cyril's face, unnoticed 
by his friend, for Cyril turned to the window as he pressed 
his side. Beneath his clothes he wore a little golden 
cross, studded with tiny spikes, which, on pressure, 
pierced the flesh. 

“ The exception rather proves the rule,” he said, smil- 
ing, as he turned his face again toward his friend. 
“ The ascetics have in all ages of the world been the salt 
of the earth. A mere protest against sensuality is some- 
thing. And people need the discipline of pain.” 

“If I were to invent a purgatory, Cyril, it would be one 
of happiness. Joy is the true educator and refiner, not 
pain. Nothing exists, or can exist, without joy, which is 
both the originator and sustainer of life in the organic 
world, and therefore, by analogy, in the spiritual. You 
and I are here to-day as the result of long ages of physi- 
cal and moral well-being enjoyed through an infinite 
chain of ancestors. Without continued physical, mental, 
and moral enjoyment throughout our own individual lives, 
you and I would never have attained to our present phy- 
sical, mental, and moral stature — such as it is. Good 
heavens, Cyril! think of the stunted, stifled natures we 
have been seeing daily in those dens of East-End vice and 
misery, and contrast them with the men who were our 
companions at Cambridge ! ” 

“I grant a certain necessary basis of physical well- 
being,” rejoined Cyril, wearily; “ but I trust the day will 
dawn when you too will rejoice in the discipline of sor- 
row. It may even now be knocking at your doors; for 
you are too happy, Harry, for a sinful man — ” 

“ I am most perfectly happy, and trust to remain so, 
my grewsome prophet,” said Everard, with a cheery 
laugh. “ I have youth, health, a clear conscience, a pro- 
fession I love, and good prospects in it, and — and — ” 
Here a curious smile, and something distantly resembling 
a blush, irradiated the doctor’s face. “ In short, I 
should be an ungrateful miscreant if I were not perfectly 
happy. Though, to be sure,” he added, “I am not go- 
ing to be married to one of the dearest girls on earth this 
day two months. Why, what is this? Oldport already, 
as I am a living man! ” He was on his feet in a moment. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


45 


eagerly scanning the faces on the platform, while Cyril 
collected the various impedimenta . “ She is not there / 5 

he muttered, in a tone of disappointment, as he appro- 
priated his own share of the plunder. 

“Oh, no!” returned Cyril, in a composed manner; 
“she had no intention of coming. Lilian would come 
alone; the phaeton only holds three, and Marion, of 
course, would not drive in alone.” 

Everard smiled at the different significance of the 
word “she” in his own and his friend's vocabulary: to 
the latter it meant Marion; to himself, Lilian. 

“ Perhaps she is here, after all,” he continued, “ wait- 
ing outside with the pony.” 

“ Go and see,” said Cyril; “ time and patience, mean- 
while, may result in the production of a porter, which 
event I will abide.” 

Everard eagerly strode along the little platform, 
thronged with laborers and market-women bearing bas- 
kets of the singularly aggressive nature affected by 
market-women — baskets constructed apparently for the 
express purpose of damaging passengers' ribs, and finding 
out their tenderest spots. He threaded his way eagerly 
through these perils, occasionally removing a stolid and 
motionless human obstacle by the simple process of plac- 
ing his hands on its shoulders and wheeling it aside, till 
he issued on the top of the hill outside the station. The 
river flowed peacefully by its wharves at the foot of the 
hill; the little town rose on its banks, and clustered lov- 
ingly round the base of the tall white tower, whose 
weathercock burned golden in the clear wintry sky; and 
the gray downs laid their arms protectingly round this, 
their child. 

But Everard did not look at this scene; he scanned 
only the lines of flys and omnibuses, each manned by a 
gesticulating, whip-waving driver, in search of the well- 
known pony from Malbourne, with the face he loved 
behind it. But there was no pony and no Lilian, and he 
returned disconsolate to Cyril, who, in the mean time, 
had succeeded in gaining the attention of one of the two 
distracted porters. 

“ Perhaps,” observed Cyril, tranquilly, “ I forgot to 
write. Who knows? Well, we must have a fly." 

“ By the sword of my grandfather,” cried Everard, “ I 


46 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


will not go in one of those confounded flys. Let us 
walk. The weather is made for it. A country walk will 
drive ascetic megrims out of your brain." 

“ And the portmanteaus?" 

“Left till called for. We can carry our own bags. 
Now, look here," he added, as Cyril demurred. “I am 
not going to mortify my flesh by riding in a cushioned fly 
behind two horses, with my luggage carried for me. I 
shall walk across country, bag on shoulder; and if that is 
too comfortable for your reverence, you can get some 
dried peas at the first grocers we come to." 

Cyril laughed and consented. Everard gave the man 
silver to buy peas to put in his boots, to his great mystifi- 
cation, and the two young men set off down the hill, deaf- 
ened by the importunities of flymen, and crossed the 
bridge over the dark, sluggish river, and admired the 
artistic pyramids of casks on the brewers* wharves, and 
rejoiced at hearing the familiar Hampshire drawl in the 
streets; for it was market-day, and many a rustic lounged, 
stolid, with open mouth, before the gay shop-windows 
decked for Christmas. 

Presently a more musical sound made their ears tingle 
with pleasant home-thoughts — the sweet, melodious con- 
fusion of wagon-bells, clashing rhythmically along the 
street, and they soon recognized Long's fine team of 
horses, each proudly skaking the music from his crest, 
and responding to the gutteral commands of William 
Grove, who strode along with an expressionless face and a 
sprig of mistletoe in his cap, cracking his whip, and 
accompanied by his satellite Jem, who bore holly in his 
hat. A faint gleam, distantly resembling a smile, spread 
over William's face at the greeting of the two young men, 
and he even went so far as to issue the strange monosyl- 
lable which brought his team to a standstill at their 
request, while the more youthful and impassioned Jem 
expanded into a distinct grin, and replied that his health 
was “middling." 

“Well, and how are all the Malhourne folk? and are 
any of our people in Oldport to-day, Grove?" 

“ I ain't zeed none as I knows on," he replied, after 
a profound consideration. 

“Any of the Malhourne folk ‘gone up the steps * to- 
day?" asked Everard, looking in the direction of the 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


47 


town hall, which was closed, with its clock glittering in 
the sunshine. 

“Ah! ’tain’t often we goos up steps,” returned Wil- 
liam, who knew well that the steps referred to were those 
conducting the malefactor before the magistrates at the 
town hall, and which were numerous and unpleasant to 
climb with a burdened conscience. “We never knows, 
though,” he added, in an unusual burst of moralizing, 
“ who med be the next.” 

“I hope it won’t be you, William,” returned Everard; 
“if it is, it won’t be for robbing those fine horses of their 
corn. Why, they look as fat as filberts,” he added, pat- 
ting the leader. 

“ It wun’t be you neither, doctor,” growled William, 
affectionately; “for all they zes as how you done for 
Jem Martin, a-cutting of him open and a-zewing of 
him up so many times, and pretty nigh pisened Mam 
Lee.” 

“ Do they say that? ” laughed Everard. “ And this is 
fame, as Mr. Crummies observed, Cyril. Well, look 
here, William! you take these bags of ours, if you think 
the wagon can stand it, and fetch our portmanteaus from 
the station. Jem can run up the hill for them.” 

“ Our luggage, William,” explained Cyril, “if it won’t 
put you out of your way. We are going home on foot, 
and didn’t know how on earth to get our things out till 
we met you.” 

After deep cogitation, and some assistance from the 
quicker intelligence of Jem, the nature of the service he 
was required to render at last dawned upon William 
G-rove’s intellect, which was apparently situated at a long 
distance from the material world, and he consented with 
gruff heartiness, and, waking all the five little peals of 
music with one motion of his whip, started off in the 
direction of the station. 

“A happy He w-y ear to you!” the two friends cried 
together at parting. 

“ And beware of going up the steps,” added Everard. 
“ Upon my word, Cyril, I should like to explore the 
recesses of that fellow’s moral consciousness. He is 
apparently up to the level of the most advanced thinkers 
of the day. He evidently looks upon crime as a misfort- 
une dependent upon quite intrinsic circumstances.” 


48 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


“ They all do,” returned Cyril. “It is the part of 
Christianity to convince the world of sin.” 

“ Who shall say how far a man’s will consents to his 
acts?” added Everard, musingly. “I hope some day to 
be able to give myself to the study of mental disease, and 
more accurately trace the connection between that and 
crime.” 

“ Let us forget both this one day,” said Cyril, whose 
spirits had undergone a wonderful change in the last half 
hour, and were now gay even to boyishness. 

Everard fell readily into his humor, and, chatting and 
laughing, the friends soon passed the streets of the little 
town and its miniature suburbs, and gained the pretty 
village of Chalkburne, the Norman tower of which 
showed in the sunlight fresh and unworn by its eight 
centuries of storm, and greeted the travellers with the 
music of its chiming hour as they walked through the 
linden girdled churchyard, rejoicing in their youth and 
the live wintry air. 

Cyril had the gift of conversation, which Everard 
somewhat lacked, and the talk was brilliant and sparkled 
with his ready wit and quick repartee, in which the doc- 
tor was continually worsted, greatly to his own good- 
humored content. His love for Cyril and his admiration 
for his gifts were boundless. The two friends had passed 
all their school-time together, Everard riding daily to 
Malbourne to study with Cyril's tutor, Mr. Maitland's 
curate; and in those young days the hero-worship began, 
the elder boy, whose mental powers were slower, if more 
solid, admiring, protecting, and helping the bright-eyed, 
clever child who shared his studies and so often dis- 
tanced him. They met again at Cambridge, where the 
senior was only one year ahead of his two-years junior, 
and there Everard found fresh cause to admire his bril- 
liant and successful friend, who gathered friends and 
admirers innumerable about him, and won laurels, both 
literary and social. 

And now family ties promised to unite them more 
closely, and Everard was glad — far more glad than Mait- 
land, whose affection for his friend, though warm, had 
not the slightest element of hero-worship, but was, on 
the contrary, flavored with a good spice of condescension. 
With all his imagination and quick sympathy, Cyril did 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


49 


not see that Henry possessed those solid and patient 
mental gifts which readily master the facts of physical 
science, and, above all, had the peculiar faculty which 
may be called scientific imagination — that he was, in 
short, one of those chosen few who make new epochs in 
the history of scientific research. Cyril looked upon his 
enthusiasm for his profession as praiseworthy, but inex- 
plicable. It seemed to him that Henry crawled upon the 
earth, while he soared in the vast heaven's blue. Such 
was the bond which united the two hard-working young 
men who walked along the chalky road that bracing 
afternoon at the end of December, 10 pass a week's well- 
earned holiday under the friendly roof of Malbourne Rec- 
tory. 


CHAPTER V. 

The afternoon sun was shining peacefully upon the 
thatched roofs of Malbourne, on the dark gray spire of 
its tree-girdled church, and on the south-west front of 
Malbourne Rectory. At one of the sun-lighted windows 
sat Lilian Maitland, busily writing, her face directed to 
the prospect without, which she occasionally looked upon 
in her thoughtful pauses. 

The lawn sloped quickly from the windows to a road 
which was concealed by trees, and beyond which rose the 
park-like grounds of Northover House in such a manner 
as to appear but a continuation of the rectory grounds. 
Somewhere down in the hollow by the road there danced 
and murmured the bright little stream which gave its 
name to Malbourne, and which Lilian knew was spark- 
ling gayly now in the sunshine, as it washed the drooping 
hart's-tongue waving from its mossy bank. Beyond the 
cluster of village roofs on the right spread a range of flat, 
windy fields to the unseen sea. Behind the Rectory, 
and on the left of Lilian's window, rose the bleak chalk 
downs, strong barriers against the wild salt winds which 
swept over those regions, summer and winter, from the 
sea. 

Mark Antony, the cat, sat demurely on the table by 
the blotting-book, thoughtfully scanning the sunny land- 

4 


50 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


scape, and pretending not to see the pert little robin on 
the lawn, while he occasionally appealed to Lilian's sym- 
pathies by rubbing his velvet head against her cheek, or 
giving her a dainty little bite, which he had copied from 
his human friends, under the impression that it was a 
kiss. In a low chair, between the table and the fire, sat 
a very pretty slender girl, toying with a piece of fancy 
work, but really intent upon trying to win a glance or re- 
sponsive purr from Mark Antony, who regarded ail her 
efforts with haughty indifference, and continued to 
evolve his philosophy of the visible universe unmoved. 

“ He is so tantalizing ! " she cried, throwing away her 
work with a pretty pettish gesture. “If he would only 
once show some deference to me, I should not care. 
Puss, puss, I say ! Come to me at once, sir ! " 

“He thoroughly understands the secret of his own 
supremacy, Marion," replied Lilian, coming to the end 
of her writing, and softly stroking the animal's snow- 
white breast. “ He knows as well as you do that you 
would think nothing of his caresses if he lavished them 
unasked." 

“ Selfish, hateful animal ! " 

“He is not selfish," replied Lilian; “he is a profound 
student of human nature. He has discovered that the 
deepest joy a human being can taste is to love disinter- 
estedly. He therefore offers mankind this enjoyment by 
permitting them to adore him at a distance. Dogs afford 
a far lower enjoyment — that of being loved." 

“ Dogs are right," said Marion, her brown eyes soften- 
ing in a wistful gaze; f \lhe happiest thing is to be loved. 
I should die if people didn't love me. I almost hated 
Cyril when I thought, in that dreadful time last spring, 
that he didn't care for me." 

“It is delicious to be loved," rejoined Lilian, “but to 
love is best. How happy Henry is in his affection for 
you ! You are the dearest thing in the world to him, 
and yet I think you care little comparatively for him; 
you even prefer your brother Leslie, who is always too 
busy with sport and gayeties to write to you." 

“Well, it is different," replied Marion. “Henry is so 
full of learning that he seems older than Leslie, who is 
the darling of his regiment and so full of life. And 
then, Henry is not engaged. I am sure he has never 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


51 


cared for any girl, and will die an old bachelor. 01 
course, he cares much more for me than I care for him. 
And he is so devoted to Cyril.” 

“ I think,” said Lilian, pressing her cheek against her 
pet’s glossy fur, “ that neither of you know the real 
worth of Henry.” 

“ Oh, he is the best old fellow in the world, but not 
clever and handsome like Cyril, and without the dash of 
Leslie. By the way, I suppose these bad boys will be 
here to-night.” 

“No doubt they will turn up some time, unless some- 
thing serious detains them, in which case they will tele- 
graph. Cyril has promised to preach to-morrow. Are 
you quite sure, Marion, that he did not mention his 
train? He always likes me to meet him at Oldport.” 

“ He said he would write later to name the train. I 
suppose he forgot.” 

“ He does forget now, Marion, as he never used to. 
He is killing himself in that dreadful parish. Oh. I 
shall be so thankful when you are married! There will 
be a perfect holiday, to begin with, and then you will 
keep him within reasonable bounds.” 

Marion laughed. “He will have to take care of me as 
well as the parish,” she said. “ But what is this?” 

“This” proved to be merely Eliza, the parlor-maid, 
who entered with her usual unmoved countenance. 

“It is only Stevens, Miss Lilian,” she said. “And 
could you please step down to the forge at once?” 

“The forge!” exclaimed Marion, with wide eyes of 
astonishment.” 

“ What is the matter there, Eliza?” asked Lilian, 
tranquilly. 

“Only Hotspur, Mr. Ingram’s horse, miss. They’ve 
been trying this hour to get him shod. Straun says he 
wouldn’t touch him for a hundred pounds.” 

“ But what has the parish clerk to do with shoeing 
horses?” exclaimed the bewildered Marion. 

“ Or the parson’s daughter?” added Lilian, laughing. 
“ Why, nothing is done in the village without Stevens, 
Marion. He and Grandfer together are the oracles of 
Malbourne. No, you shall not come with me; you would 
be frightened to death. Go and see if mother wants any 
thing. She will be waking now.” 


52 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


“ Oh, I say, Lilian!” cried a little voice, as Lennie 
burst in, rosy and excited, “ do come along. Such 
larks! Hotspur has kicked a cart to atoms, and now he 
is letting fly in all directions, and is killing Judkins, and 
there’s Stevens stamping at the back door, and the whole 
village with its hair on end.” 

“ Hyperbole is Lennie’s favorite figure,” commented 
Lilian, going out into the hall, and taking her hat and 
jacket. “ Run on, Lennie, and say I am just coming. 
Matter? Oh, my dearest Marion, nothing! Only that 
Ingram Swaynestone spoils his horses’ tempers, and then 
is surprised that his servants can’t manage them.” 

In another minute Lilian had passed with quick, 
light step and erect carriage down the drive, and along 
the village high-road, bordered with its little gardens, in 
which one or two belated autumn flowers still made a 
brave show against the wintry rigor. She went quickly, 
but without hurry, and found time on the way to give 
some directions about the church to the clerk, a lean, 
rugged figure, stooping slightly beneath the fardel of 
some fifty winters, and crowned with a shock of grizzled 
red hair, who walked and talked excitedly at her side. 

Soon she saw the forge, from the black heart of which 
streamed a ruddy glow, looking lurid in contrast with the 
sunshine, and round which was grouped a dense little 
crowd of women and children, with a few men. Straun, 
the smith, a burly, grimy, bare-armed figure in a 
leathern apron, stood in an attitude of defiant despair, 
one strong hand grasping his great hammer, which he 
had flung on the anvil, and calling silently on Heaven to 
witness that he was ready to shoe Christian horses, how- 
ever rampant, but not demons, hippogriffs, or any such 
uncanny monsters. Near him, looking rather pale, but 
resolute, as became one superior to the weaker emotions, 
an old, bent, withered man, with shrewd gray eyes and 
pursed-up mouth, stood leaning forward on a stout oaken 
stick, and shook his head as one who despaired of finding 
virtue in these degenerate days in either man or beast. 

4 “ And I zays, as I zed afore,” he repeated emphasizing 
his words with the stick, which he dug into the ground 
with all the force of his two withered hands, “ zend for 
Miss Lilian — zend for she! ” 

“ Lard love ’ee, Granfer,” observed a stout fellow in a 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


53 


smock-frock, who stood inside the forge in attendance on 
a couple of massive, glossy-coated cart-horses, who were 
cozily munching some hay dropped before them, and 
contemplating the proceeding lazily with their great soft 
winking eyes, “ where's the use of a gal?" — a proposition 
received by Granfer and the assembled village with silent 
scorn. 

The centre of the excited little crowd, which occasion- 
ally burst asunder and flew outward with a wild mingling 
of women’s and children’s shrieks — for the men scurried 
off with a silent celerity that was all the more effectual — 
was a beautiful chestnut horse, not standing, according 
to the comfortable and decent wont of horses, on four 
firmly planted feet, but outraging people’s belief in the 
stability of natural laws by rearing himself wildly and 
insecurely on his two hind legs, and dangling from his 
mouth in mid-air a miserable white-faced biped in sleeved 
waistcoat and gaiters, whose cap had fallen off, and whose 
damp hair streamed as wildly as Hotspur’s own frenetic 
mane and quivering tail. Tired of this folly, with his 
ears laid back, his nostrils wide and red, and his eyes 
showing nothing but the whites. Hotspur would suddenly 
drop his victim to his native earth, and, plunging for- 
ward on his other end, as if intent on turning a somer- 
set, would throw his hind hoofs up toward the sky in a 
manner most alarming to those who enjoyed a near view 
of the proceedings; ant then, wearying of this, he would 
dance round on all four legs at once in a manner utterly 
bewildering to contemplate. 

‘‘Why, Hotspur,’’ cried Lilian, in her clear, mellow 
voice, as she stepped quickly through the crowd just as 
Hotspur dropped the unfortunate groom to the ground, 
and prepared to turn himself the other way up, “what is 
this, old fellow?" and she caught the rein from the 
groom’s hand, pushing the latter gently away, and laid 
her slender, strong white hand firmly upon the quivering 
neck of the maddened, plunging horse. “Fy, Hotspur, 
fy!" 

No one had observed Lilian’s approach, and when she 
appeared, as if dropped from the skies in the groom’s 
place, a sudden quiet pervaded every human face and 
limb, the crowd fell back, and all looked on, save the 
sceptic with the cart-horses, with an air of tranquil 


54 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


expectancy; while Lilian, without a trace of anxiety or 
agitation, talked in caressing, reproving tones to the ill- 
conducted steed, whose limbs had quivered into some 
approach to quiet at the first touch of the slender, spirit- 
like hand on his neck. 

But even Lilianas magic touch could not expel the 
demon of passion at once from the maddened creature. 
He still reared and plunged and danced, in a manner 
that led the spectators to give him plenty of room for his 
evolutions; but he became gradually quieter, until he 
stood as Providence intended horses to stand, on all four 
feet at once, and only betrayed the internal workings of 
his outraged feelings by the quivering of his limbs and 
body, the workings of his ears and eyes, and the redness 
of his wide nostrils, while Lilian's musical voice never 
ceased its low monologue of soothing and reproach, and 
her hand never left stroking and patting his shining 
neck and shoulders. At Hotspur's first backward rear, 
indeed, her hand left him perforce, and she only avoided 
being hoisted in mid-air like the luckless groom by giv- 
ing him a long rein and stepping quickly back out of the 
way of his formidable forefeet. 

This was an ugly moment, and a woman in the crowd 
uttered an exclamation of dismay and turned pale at the 
sight of the girl beneath the rearing horse, though no 
one else betrayed the least emotion, not even the sceptic 
in the smock-frock, whose mouth was too widely opened 
in astonishment to leave room for his features to express 
any other feeling; but Hotspur, finding that Lilian did 
not balk him of his dance on his hind legs, soon desisted 
from that uncomfortable performance, and yielded, as 
his betters frequently did, gradually to the soothing 
charm of her voice and touch, until he became, figura- 
tively speaking, clothed and in his right mind. She 
found fault with Hotspur's bit, and pointed out the 
undue tightness of his girths to Judkins, whose cheeks 
had now resumed their native ruddy hue; and when these 
defects were remedied, she led the horse a little way 
along the road and back again, and fed him with sugar 
and other dainties, till Hotspur's heart waxed so glad 
within him that he consented to stand like a lamb, while 
Straun, not without some misgiving in his bluff face, 
and a muttered reference to his wife and seven children, 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


55 


fitted his new shoes on to his restive feet with what speed 
and dexterity he could muster. 

“And I zed/' observed Granfer, again striking his 
oaken staff emphatically on the ground, and lonking 
round on the assembled village as if for applause, “zed 
I, 4 Zend for Miss Lilian — zend for she!'" 

The crowd, in the mean time, had been augmented by 
the arrival of two other spectators, who were unobserved 
in the absorbing interest evoked by Hotspur and his 
conqueror. One was a tall, finely built man, somewhat 
past middle life, on a good, well-bred bay horse, which 
he rode and handled with perfect horsemanship. He 
stopped, in the first instance, to avoid riding over the 
village population; and in the second, to witness the 
curious little drama enacted in the wintry sunshine. 
He was soon joined by a gray-haired clergyman, of vener- 
able aspect and refined features, who looked on with 
quiet interest. 

“Upon my word, Maitland," said the equestrian, ad- 
dressing the latter,/ 4 this is a new revelation of your daugh- 
ter’s powers. I was already aware that she soothed the 
troubles and quieted the consciences of the whole village, 
but I did not know that she undertook the blacksmith's 
labors as well." 

44 My daughter," replied Mr. Maitland, tranquilly, 
44 has received a very singular gift from the Almighty. 
She can subdue any animal, tame or wild, by some mys- 
terious virtue of touch, voice, or glance — perhaps of all 
three. Not a very lofty gift, perhaps. Sir Lionel, but 
one which is often very useful in a homely way." 

44 But surely, Maitland, you cannot approve of Lilian's 
rendering such dangerous services as these. Are you not 
afraid for her?" 

44 No; I have every confidence in her powers. And I 
do not like to make her nervous by suggesting danger. 
Perhaps one secret of her influence is her absolute fear- 
lessness. Watch the expression of her eye. No; I like 
my child to render whatever service she is capable of to 
her fellow-creatures. Parents often err, I think, by 
interfering unnecessarily with their Children's actions. 
Well, Lilian, and what was the matter?" he asked, as 
the crowd, perceiving them, fell back respectfully, with 
courtesies and cap-touchings. Judkins, receiving his 


56 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


four-footed charge from Lilian's hand, prepared to mount 
and ride away, not without warning from Lilian, and 
strict injunctions to eschew whipping and other irrita- 
tions, and to quiet Hotspur's nerves by a good canter on 
the turf. 

“Only a horse with a spoiled temper, father," she 
replied. “How do you do. Sir Lionel? Tell Mr. 
Swaynestone that I mean to scold him roundly about 
Hotspur. He is far too hot himself to be able to indulge 
in chestnut horses. And, indeed, I am not sure that he 
ought to have any horse at all." 

“All this," said Sir Lionel, who had dismounted and 
taken off his hat with graceful, old-fashioned courtesy, 
“I will faithfully do, though surely one word from 
yourself would have more effect than volumes I could 
say. Do your spells work only on the lower creation, 
Lilian? " 

“I suppose so," returned Lilian, turning homeward in 
the reddening sunbeams, accompanied by the two gentle- 
men and the horse, which latter she patted to his great 
satisfaction. “ My spells consist chiefly of sympathy and 
affection, and these are perfect with innocent animals and 
children, but only partial with sinful men." 

“Ben Lee will never forgive you for inducing me to 
drive without bearing-reins," said Sir Lionel. “I wish 
you could have seen the sight, Maitland. Lee ignomin- 
iously dethroned, your daughter and myself on the box, 
Lilian handling the ribbons, and driving me up and down 
before the house without bearing-reins. Lee never drives 
out now without preparing for his last moment, poor 
fellow. I hope you will not help poachers, Lilian. I 
hear you can surround yourself with fifty pheasants at 
any moment in our woods." 

“If I were to hurt anything I think my power would 
be gone; and even if I did not love a thing I should have 
no power, for I have no influence on reptiles." 

“ And does Cyril, who is so like you, share your 
power? " 

“As a child he did," interposed Mr. Maitland. “You 
remember the bull that killed Lee's father, Sir Lionel? 
Imagine my feelings on seeing the twins, then about six 
years old, stroking him, and trying to reach by jumping 
up to his terrific horns! Still, Cyril has an unusual in- 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 57 

fiuence over animals, though it becomes fainter. He has 
more power with human beings than his sister.” 

“Yet Lilian stopped that fellow who was beating his 
wife to death.” 

“And the whole village looking on and not lifting a 
finger — the cowards!” Lilian flashed out. “He fell 
down in sheer fright when I rushed at him. Come in. 
Sir Lionel, and have some tea,” she added, as they 
reached the gates. 

But Sir Lionel refused the tea, having still some dis- 
tance to ride before dark. 

“ I am in Lady Swaynestone’s service to-night,” he 
said, “and she bid me ask you to come and counsel her 
about some distribution of coals or what not, when you 
have a spare moment. I wish you could also exorcise the 
demon of extravagance from that boy Ingram.” 

“She nearly scolds the poor fellow to death as it is,” 
said Mr. Maitland. “ We are expecting Henry Everard 
to-night.” 

“ So I hear. A promising fellow, Sir Andrew Smith- 
son tells me. He was both clever and kind in his treat- 
ment of Lee’s wife last spring. As a lad, I thought him 
rather dull. However, we all pin our faith on Dr. 
Everard now at Swaynestone.” 

And bidding them farewell. Sir Lionel sprang like any 
youth to his saddle, and rode away at a canter, looking 
like a very prince, as his tall and gracefully erect figure 
disappeared among the trees in the dusk. 

The group at the forge, meantime, rightly judged that 
so much heat, toil, and anxiety required the alleviation of 
moisture, and Straun, casting his hammer aside, pro- 
claimed his intention of adjoining for solace to the Sun, 
which stood at the corner by the cross-roads, a few paces 
further down the road. 

“ Come on, Stevens,” he said, “ and toss me who’ll 
treat Granfer.” 

The guardian of the cart-horses thought it a pity not 
to follow so good an example; so also did Hale, the wheel- 
wright, who lived at the opposite corner; and Wax, who 
chanced to be the school-master, and Baines, the tailor, 
whose monotonous indoor occupation, though varied with 
pig-jobbing and gardening, required frequent solace of 
this nature. Hale’s brother Tom, a soldier resting from 


58 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


war’s alarms in his native village in a very undress uni- 
form, consisting of no belt, a tunic unbuttoned all the 
way down and displaying a large expanse of striped shirt, 
trousers tucked up round the ankles, a short pipe, and a 
muffin-cap perilously askew, considered it a breach of 
manners unbecoming a soldier and a gentleman to permit 
these worthy men to drink without his assistance, and 
similar feelings animated his brother Jim, a sailor, hear- 
ing the legend, “ H. M. S. * Bellerophon,’ ” on his cap. 
So the brave fellows accommodating their pace to that of 
Granfer, which was more dignified than swift, turned in 
as one man beneath the low doorway of the Sun, and 
grouped themselves about the cozy, sanded bar, where 
the firelight was beginning to look cheerily ruddy in the 
fading afternoon. 

“ And I zaid,” added Granfer, striking the sanded floor 
dogmatically, with his stick, “ ‘ Zend for Miss Lilian — 
zend fur she.’ ” 

“Ay, Granfer growled the smith, “it’s all very well 
for Miss Lilian. She ain’t got a wife and seven children, 
and her bread to git.” 

“ I zes, zes I,” interposed the sceptic in the smock- 
frock, who had taken a pull at his tankard, and was 
removing the foam from his lips by the simple applica- 
tion of the back of his hand, “ ‘ Where’s the use of a 
gal?* Fve a zin it, and I believes it. I shouldn’t a 
believed it if I hadn’t a zin it.” 

“You never believes nothink,” observed Jim. “Ah! 
if you’d a sin what Fve a sin aboord the ‘Bellyruffian’ — ” 

“ Or, if he’d a sin they there snake-charmers in India, 
what he won’t believe in,” added the soldier. 

“ Ah! ” broke in the clerk, “ you put Miss Lilian aboord 
the f Bellyruffian,’ or take her out to Injy and let her 
charm snakes, and I’ll war’nt she’ll do it. That ar buoy 
Dick, whatever she done to he, nobody knows. A bad 
’un he wer, wouldn’t do nothing he hadn’t a mind to. 
You .med bate ’un till you couldn’t stand. Wax have 
broke sticks about his back, and covered ’un with weals, 
but catch he gwine to school if he’d a mind to miche. I 
zes to Miss Lilian, I zes, ‘ Fve a bate that ar buoy black 
and blue,’ I zes, f and Fve a kep ’un without vittles this 
two days, and he wun’t do nothun he an’t a mind to.’ 
And she ups and zes, * Stevens,’ she zes, * I should like to 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


59 


bate you/ she zes ; ‘ I should like to bate you green and 
yaller/ she zes. ‘ Lard love 'ee, Miss Lilian, whatever 
would ye bate I for? * I zes, zes I. ‘ Because you are a 
fool, Stevens/ she zes, ‘and you are ruining that buoy, 
and turning him into a animal/ she zes. And she took 
hm up rectory, and kep' ’un there a day, and sent 'un 
home as good as gold. And she made me promise I 
wouldn't bate 'un no more for two good weeks, and I 
ain't bate 'un zince, and he'll do what he's told now with- 
out the stick. ‘ I should like to bate you green and yal- 
ler, Stevens,' she zes. And she'd a .done it, she would, 
green and yaller — ah! that she would, mates." 

“I don’t deny," said Baines, the tailor, whose profes- 
sion rendered him morbid, revolutionary, and inclined to 
distrust the utility of existing institutions, “but what 
Miss Lilian may have her uses." 

“Ah, Baines," interrupted the soldier, “you ain't such 
a fool as you looks, after all." 

Before the stupefied Baines, who was accustomed to 
have his remarks received with reverence, could reply to 
this insult, public feeling was suddenly outraged by the 
following observation from the smock-frocked sceptic, 
the want of wisdom in whom was accounted for by his 
having only recently come to Malbourne from a village at 
least ten miles off that centre of intelligence. 

“But what shall us do when Miss Lilian gets mar- 
ried ? " 

“Married!" shouted the clerk. “And who ses she's 
a-gwine to marry?" 

“ She med marry; then again she medn't," replied this 
foolish person, unabashed by the dark glances bent upon 
him. 

“ Miss Lilian," observed G-ranfer, who had been indul- 
gently listening while he despatched his beer, and thus 
affording weaker wits the opportunity of exercising them- 
selves during his forbearance, “ain't agwine to marry 
nobody; " and, thrusting his staff forward and resting his 
two hands upon it, Granfer looked round the assembly 
with austere menace in his shrewd gray eyes. 

Nobody dared reply to this, and silence prevailed, 
broken only by the sound of good liquor disappearing 
down men's throats, and a weak, half-audible murmur 
from the smock-frock about girls being girls, whether 
gentle or simple. 


60 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


“ I zes to my missus, vive year agone last Middlemas, 
zes I," continued Granfer, who chanced to be the grand- 
sire of the indignant clerk, “ ‘ Miss Lilian ain't one o' your 
marrying zart; ' " and again Granfer looked round the 
assembly as if challenging them to deny the undeniable, 
and was met by an assenting murmur of “ Ah's!" 

“ Miss Lilian," pursued Granfer, with an air of in- 
spiration, “ is turned vour-and-twenty. Vour-and-twenty 
year old come last May is they twins. Well I minds 
the night they was barned. The last time as ever I druv 
a 'oss. A vrosty night 'twas, and nipped all the archards 
miles round, and there warn't no vruit that year. Ah! 
Varmer Long he'd a lost dree-and-dirty yowes lambing- 
time that year. Well I minds it. I druv pony-chaise 
into Oldport, and vetched out t' doctor. And I zes to 
my missus, I zes, when I come home, ‘ Master's got 
twins!' Ay, that's what I zed, zure enough. And my 
missus she zes, zes she, ‘ Lard love 'ee, Granfer,' she zes, 
‘you don't zayzo?' she zes;" and again Granfer paused 
and looked round to perceive the effect of his elo- 
quence. 

“Ay," said the landlord, feeling that courtesy now 
obliged him to entertain the intellects as well as the 
bodies of his guests, “twins is zummat when it comes to 
that. Twins is bad enough for poor volk, but when it 
comes to ladies and they. Lard 'a massey!" 

“Ah!" murmured Granfer, shaking his head with pro- 
found wisdom, and at the same time regretfully contem- 
plating the vacuum in his beer-pot, “them twins done 
for Mrs, Maitland. She ain't been the zame 'ooman 
zince, never zimmed to perk up agen arter that. Vine 
children they was, too, as ever you'd wish to zee, and 
brought up on Varmer Long's Alderney cow, kep' special 
vor 'um, as I used to vetch the milk marnin' and evenin'. 
I did, zure enough." 

Here Tom, the soldier, who, in virtue of his red coat, 
was bound to be susceptible to feminine charms, opined 
that Miss Lilian was still “ a smartish looking gal; " and 
Jim, the sailor, added that he didn't see why she shouldn't 
pick up some smart lad yet, for his heart was warm, and 
he could not bear to consign an unoffending girl to the 
chills of single blessedness. There was Lieutenant Ever- 
ard, of the “ Bellerophon," a frequent visitor at the rec- 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 61 

tory, for example — as smart an officer as Jim had ever 
seen, he added. 

“ Ah, goo on wi' ye!” cried Granfer, greatly refreshed 
by the polite replenishment of his pot at Tom's expense. 
“ Miss Lilian's as pretty a maid as Tom'll zee in a day's 
march. But she wun't marry nobody. Vur why ? sez I. 
Cause she wun't ha'e the common zart, and the upper 
crust wun't ha'e she.” 

“W'atever's come over Judkins now?” asked Hale, the 
wheelwright, musingly. “ He'd had a drup too much ’s 
afternoon, and he was a latherin' into Hotspur like mad 
coming down shoot.* He hadn't ought to treat a boss 
like that.” 

“A man med well drink,” said the tailor, “ afore trust- 
ing hisself to a animal like that there. Steady as Charlie 
Judkins was, poor chap! What these 'ere rich men got 
to answer for! ” 

“ I never zeen a 'oss rampageouser,” replied the smith; 
“ but I never zeen a 'oss Miss Lilian couldn't quiet, or a 
ass either.” 

“ Your missus 'ull be sending for her one day, then,” 
said Jim; and the whole assembly broke into a loud guf- 
saw, after which Granfer very impressively related the 
history of the hunted fox, which appeared one day with 
his paws on the window-sill of Lilian's sitting-room, 
followed by the pack in full cry, and the whole field at no 
great distance. He told how Lilian quickly opened the 
window, Reynard leaped in, and she as quickly shut it; 
and how the huntsman, on finding the hounds at check 
round the rectory window, looked in, and was greatly 
shocked to see poor Reynard's pointed nose and glittering 
eyes peering out from among the skirts of a young lady 
sitting quietly at work, and tranquilly surveying the 
baffled hounds baying outside. 

Lilian refused to deliver up her fugitive, holding par- 
ley with the master of the hounds through the closed 
and latched window, until the latter had withdrawn his 
pack; and it was not until the premises had been cleared 
a good half-hour of every vestige of hound, horse, and 
man, that she unbolted door or window, and suffered her 
weary, panting prisoner to depart, which he did with 


* A short steep hill on the highway. 


62 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


evident regret and thankfulness for hospitality — a hospi- 
tality poorly requited by him, since he managed to 
snatch a chick from the poultry-yard in effecting his 
escape. 

But no one seemed to think there was anything un- 
usual in Lilian's power over living creatures ; it was sim- 
ply what one expected of Miss Lilian, just as one expected 
church bells to ring and cocks to crow. ISTor had any one 
thanked her for assisting so effectively at the shoeing of 
Hotspur. 

Then followed a long history of animals healed by 
Lilian, and in particular of a dog of Ingram Swayne- 
stone's, which the latter was going to shoot, when she 
begged its life, and nursed it into health. Also of the 
racers Ingram had at a trainer's, and the money he 
lost by them; of the oaks and beeches at Swaynestone, 
which had to expiate these losses ; and of the young 
fellow's probable descent to beggary through the paths 
of pleasure. 

“ He's a vine young veller," observed Granfer, at the 
close of his second pot ; “a wild 'un zurely. His vather 
was a wild 'un, too; ’tis the blood and the high veeding. 
So was his grandfather. I minds things as Sir Lionel did 
would make 'ee all stare. Men is just the zame as 'osses 
— veed 'em up, and they vlings. The well-bred 'uns is 
vive times skittisher than t'others. Wuld Sir Lionel, he 
was the wildest of all — druv his stags into Oldport vour- 
in-hand, he did, and killed dree or vour volks in the 
streets. Ah ! times isn't what they was," sighed Granfer, 
regretfully draining his pot. 

By this time it was dark night. The Sun windows 
threw a warm glow over the road; the stars sparkled 
keenly above the thatched^roof of the little hostel; and 
the smell of wood-smoke/ mingled with the appetizing 
odor of fried pork, red herrings, and onion soup, rising 
all over the village, warned the topers that the hour of 
supper was approaching, and they would have dispersed, 
however unwillingly, but for the chimes of wagon-bells 
along the road, which beguiled them into waiting while 
William Grove deposited his* parcels at the Sun, took the 
one glass offered by the host, and recounted the news 
from Oldport. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


63 


CHAPTER VI. 

Osr looking back in after life to that brisk winter's walk, 
both Everard and Maitland held it as one of their sun- 
niest memories. Every step seemed to put a fresh lustre 
in Cyril's eyes, and add to the wine-like sparkle of his 
conversation. In proportion as his spirits fell at one 
time, they rose at another by virtue of his sensitive, 
emotional temperament; while Henry's steady, sunny 
cheerfulness went on deepening more slowly, but perhaps 
more surely, and at last bubbled over. Presently they 
passed a woman toiling up a hill with a baby and a 
basket, of both which burdens Everard relieved her, to 
her unbounded surprise, coolly handing the basket to 
Cyril, and himself bearing the baby, which he tossed till 
it crowed with ecstasy. Having left these trifles at a 
roadside cottage, with a shilling to requite the woman for 
the loan of her infant, they reached Swaynestone Park, 
and met Ben Lee, who was crossing the road on his way 
from his cottage to the stables. 

Everard greeted him with a cordiality to which Lee re- 
plied gruffly, and with an evident intention of hurrying on. 

“Oh, come, Lee," said Everard, “you are not so 
busy as all that! How are they all up at the Temple? 
Alma's roses in full bloom, I hope? And my patient, 
Mrs. Lee, has she quite got over the accident? I shall be 
looking in very soon." 

“ You may save yourself the trouble, Doctor Everard," 
returned Lee, in a surly manner; “ thank 'ee kindly all 
the same. But I want no more gentlefolk up at my 
house. I've had enough of they. Good afternoon, Mr. 
Cyril; glad to see you home, sir;" and, touching his hat, 
he passed quickly on, leaving Everard in a state of stupe- 
faction in the middle of the road. 

“What the deuce is the matter with Lee?" he ex- 
claimed. “ Surely he can't be drunk, Cyril! " 

All the light had faded from Cyril's radiant face. The 
moment he caught sight of the coachman, he made the 
old movement of pressing his hand to his side in a spasm 
of pain, and he seemed almost as impatient of delay as 
Lee himself. 


64 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


“ I never heard of his drinking/"’ he replied, evasively. 
“ Perhaps things have gone wrong with him. Look here. 
Henry! let us cut the high-road, and get home across 
country; we shall save half a mile, and find the ladies at 
tea.-” 

“ What sense can you get out of a fellow in love?” 
returned Everard, leading the way over the stile. “ For 
him mankind dwindles down to a slim puss of a girl, with 
dimples and a pair of brown eyes. Go on, man ! * Gather 
ye rosebuds while ye may; and, lilting out the gay old 
ballad with all the strength of his honest lungs, Everard 
resumed his light-hearted manner, and did not obserye 
that CyriFs gayetv had become forced and spasmodic. 

A ruddy glow above the wooded crests of Northover 
was all that remained of day when they entered the rec- 
tory grounds by the churchyard path, and found Lilian 
with the cat gravely coiled at her feet at the hall door, 
darkly outlined against the faint, crimson light of the 
hall stove. 

“ Your instinct is infallible, Lilian,” said Cyril, em- 
bracing her; “for you were not even sure that I was com- 
ing to-night. Dear Lilian, it is nice to see you again! ” 

“I am glad not to be wholly eclipsed by the new star,” 
she replied, laughing, yet scanning his face with some 
anxiety, while she continued to hold his hand. Then she 
turned to Henry, over whose spirits an unaccountable 
damp had descended, and offered him her hand; while 
Cyril stooped to stroke Mark Antony, who was tri- 
umphantly rubbing himself round and round his legs with 
loud purrs and exultant tail. “ I am so glad you have 
brought him, Henry,” she said; adding, in a lower voice, 
u he is looking horribly ill.” 

By this time Mr. Maitland, the children, the dogs, and 
all the servants were in the hall, greeting Cyril with such 
enthusiasm that Henry remained for some moments 
unnoticed by Lilian's side. 

“You all seem extremely glad to see Cyril," he 
observed to her, with rueful emphasis. 

“Dear Henry, I know we are horribly rude to our 
guests when we have Cyril to spoil,” she replied, laying 
her hand gently on his arm. 

He took the hand in his and pressed it warmly to his 
side, and felt that the rainbow radiance had suddenly 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


65 


returned to his universe. But the bright moment was 
very brief, for it was now his turn to be welcomed, and 
by the time he was free to go into the drawing-room, 
Lilian was not to be seen. 

“But where is Marion?" asked Cyril, looking round 
the drawing-room, after he had duly saluted his mother, 
who was, as usual, on her couch. 

“ I think you will find her in my room," replied Lil- 
ian, as indifferently as if she had not specially arranged 
for the lovers to meet there. “We dine punctually at 
half-past seven. No, Henry, you foolish fellow, you are 
to stay here," she added, as Cyril left the room, and 
Henry attempted to follow him. 

“A brother, I suppose, is of no account in these days," 
grumbled Everard, seating himself by Mrs. Maitland's 
couch with a contented air, nevertheless. “All this 
courtship is sickening to me, Mrs. Maitland. As for that 
hopeful son of yours, not one word of sense have I got 
out of him this clay, nor do I expect to get for the next 
two months. Thank goodness, it must come to an end 
then, and they will settle down to a life's squabbling like 
sane people." 

“Ah, young people! young people," said Mr. Maitland, 
looking very happy about it. “We must not be hard 
upon them, Henry. We all go mad once — Lennie will 
turn that back into Latin for you, eh ? But we consider 
Cyril and Marion a very sensible young couple, don't we, 
Nellie?" 

“I think," replied Mrs. Maitland, laughing, “that we 
consider everything that Cyril does sensible. When his 
biography is written, it will be said that his family did, 
to a certain extent, appreciate him." 

Whereupon the conversation turned upon Cyril and his 
doings and his prospects, and their anxiety about him, 
and suddenly the thought struck chill to Everard's mar- 
row: What would happen, in case of Cyril's failure, 
death, or other misadventure, to the innocent family 
circle of which he was the central hope? 

The curtains were drawn snugly against the frosty cold 
without. Eliza, all smiles and fresh cap-ribbons, brought 
a lamp and tea; and Everard wondered if Heaven could 
possibly be an improvement on the present. No one ever 
made or poured out tea like Lilian, he thought; no tea 
5 


66 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


ever had so divine an effect on the nervous system as 
hers. For weeks he had dreamed of sitting thus by the 
drawing-room fire, his whole being pervaded by the 
delicious fact of her presence, and now he found the 
reality sweeter than the dream. 

Not for weeks only, but for years afterward, did the 
memory of that fireside scene shine warmly on the dark- 
ness of his life. The lamplight was so soft that the fire, 
on which Lennie had thrown some fir-cones, disputed for 
mastery with it, and added to the cheery radiance of the 
pretty drawing-room. On one side of the fire, Mrs. 
Maitland, still beautiful, though faded, and exquisitely 
dressed, lay on her couch amidst becomingly arranged 
furs and shawls; Henry sat by her on a low seat, and 
rendered her various little filial attentions; Mr. Maitland 
sat facing the fire, with its light playing on his silver 
hair and clean-cut features, the prototype of Cyril’s. 

On the other side of the hearth sat Lilian, with the 
tea-table at her side; Winnie was on a stool at her feet, 
her head pressed to her sister’s knee, on which reposed, 
in careless majestv, Mark Antony, gracefully toying with 
the golden curls tossed in pretty negligence within reach 
of his paws. The warm rug before the fire was occupied 
by the terrier and the pug, the children’s tea-cups, and 
the recumbent full-length of Lennie, who sprung to his 
feet from time to time to pass people’s cups. 

Lilian spoke little. She and Henry did not address 
each other once; but his eye never lost the picture on the 
opposite side of the fire, which reminded him of Raphael’s 
Virgin of the Cardellino. It was not that Lilian’s 
intelligent face in the least resembled that harmless, 
faultlessly featured Madonna’s, though her deep gray eyes 
were bent down much in the same way on the child-face 
and sportive animal on her knee as the Virgin’s in the 
picture. It was the look of divine, innocent, ineffable con- 
tent that she wore. And yet Everard did not appear to 
be looking at this charming picture, though Lilian knew 
that he saw it, and was equally conscious of the picture 
he made, his broad shoulders and athletic limbs affording 
a fine contrast to her mother’s fragile, faded grace. 

“And what are your plans, Henry?” asked Mr. 
Maitland at last, when Cyril’s affairs had been discussed 
over and over again. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


67 


“ I think of buying a good practice near Southampton, 
and settling down as a country doctor,” he replied. “I 
have enough property to make me fairly independent, 
and shall be able to carry on my scientific pursuits with- 
out fear of starvation.” 

“And the next step, I suppose, will be to take a 
wife?” 

“The very next step,” replied Everard, looking 
thoughtfully into the glowing heart of the fire. 

Lilian bent her head a little, and caught away a curl 
at which Mark Antony was snatching. “If no one is 
going to have any more tea, pussie shall have the rest of 
the cream,” she said. 

Cyril, in the mean time, quickly found his way to the 
well-known room called Lilian’s, where Marion was 
sitting, in the dusk, alone, but acutely conscious of the 
light, swift steps along the corridor which bore het 
expected lover to her side. They met in silence, each 
young heart being too full for speech; and it was not 
until Cyril had released Marion from his embrace, and 
placed her in a chair by the fire-side, that he said, kneel- 
ing on the rug near her: 

“ Am I indeed quite forgiven, Marion? ” 

“ You foolish fellow! How many times have I written 
that word?” she replied, laughing. 

“Written, yes; but I want to hear it from your own 
lips — I want to be quite sure,” he continued, with una- 
bated earnestness, the blue fire of his eyes bent upon hei 
soft brown gaze, while he held both her hands pressed 
against his breast. 

“ Dear Cyril, you make too much of what is better for- 
gotten,” she said. “We quarreled long ago and made it 
up long ago, though we have not met since. ” 

“Forgotten? Oh, Marion, do you think I can ever for- 
get? And though you forgive me, do you think I can 
ever forgive myself? ” 

“Certainly. Don’t lovers always quarrel; and are 
they not better friends afterward? And don’t you mean 
to forgive poor me? I have forgiven us both; though, 
indeed, those few months were very dreadful.” 

“Dreadful! They were more than dreadful to me. 
Oh, Marion, if you knew, if you only dreamed, how un- 
worthy I am, you who are so white, so stainless! You can 


68 the SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 

never guess. Sometimes I wonder that I ever dare hope 
to call you mine, so black am I in comparison with you.” 

“ Cyril, this is lovers talk — exaggeration. It makes 
me feel ashamed,” she replied, soft blushes stealing over 
her gentle face in the firelight; “it makes me remember 
that I am but a weak, foolish girl, and greatly need the 
guidance of a strong, good man like you.” 

“Good! God help me! ” he exclaimed, turning his face 
from the modest glance that seemed to scorch his very 
soul. “ Marion, I am not good; there is no weaker man 
than I on God's earth, and without you I think I should 
be utterly lost. Do you know — no, you never can know 
— what it is to be able to love a good woman; to feel the 
vileness die out of one at the very thought of her; to be 
strengthened and purified by the very atmosphere she 
breathes — to feel at the thought of losing her — Marion, 
dear Marion, I think sometimes if you knew the darkness 
that was upon my soul during those wretched months 
when we were parted, I fear — oh, I fear that you would 
cast me off with loathing and scorn — ” 

Marion smiled a gentle smile, only dimly seeing the 
passionate agony in Cyril's shadowed face. “ I know that 
I could never scorn you ,” she interrupted, with tender 
emphasis. 

Cyril bent his head over her hands in silence for a few 
seconds; and then, looking up again, said in a more col- 
lected manner, “ Marion, will you take me, worthless as I 
am, and bear with me and cleave to me through good and 
evil report, and help me, in spite of the past, to be a bet- 
ter man? ” 

“Dear,” she replied, gently, “I have taken you for 
better and for worse. I don't expect you to be faultless, 
though I do admire and honor you above all men. 1 
should be sorry if you were faultless, because, you know I 
am not faultless myself; I am not like Lilian, even. We 
shall help each other to be wiser and better, I hope.” 

Cyril had averted his face from the innocent, loving gaze 
he could not endure, but he turned once more and looked 
into Marion's charming face, which was radiant in a 
sudden burst of firelight, while his own remained in 
darker shadow than ever. 1 ‘ Promise once more,” he said, 
in a low, impassioned tones, “ that you will never leave 
me.” 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


6$ 


Marion suffered herself to glide into the embrace before 
her, and repeated the promise, half laughing to herself at 
the foolish importance assigned to trifles, by lovers, and 
half believing in the intensity of the oft-repeated assur- 
ances, and was very happy until a discreet clatter of silver 
and china was heard outside, followed by a knock at the 
door, and, after an interval, the entrance of Eliza, who 
was edified to find Marion at one end of the room, adjust- 
ing some china on a bracket, and Cyril at the other, gaz- 
ing out of the window with great interest at the frosty 
stars. 

When the candles were lighted, the curtains drawn and 
the tea poured out, all traces of his passionate agitation 
had left Cyril’s beautiful, severely cut features, and he sat 
by Marion’s side, tea-cup in hand, quiet and content, 
the very picture of the ideal curate of commonplace just 
dropped in to tea. 

Marion now saw him clearly, and was distressed at his 
wan and worn appearance, and also at a certain look ^ 
never had before the fatal winter she passed in the Medi- 
terranean with her brother. Since then she had met him. 
face to face but once, on the day when he came to ask 
forgiveness and renew the engagement, and then, natu- 
rally, he did not look like his old self. “ Was it only 
toil which had robbed Cyril of the bloom of his youth?” 
she wondered; and she sighed. “ It was time you had 
a holiday, I think,” she said, softly. “ You must not 
be such an ascetic any more; you do not belong to a celi- 
bate priesthood, remember.” 

“ This is not exactly the cell of an anchorite,” replied 
Cyril, with the smile which won so many hearts, as he 
rested his head comfortably on the back of his low chair, 
and gazed upon Marion’s slender grace. “ Mayn’t I 
have another lump of sugar, Marion? Lilian and I have 
expended much thought on the decoration of this room.” 

“ And taste,” said Marion, looking round upon the 
pictures and bric-a-brac and various evidences of cul- 
tured taste, though it is not to be supposed that the two 
lovers were there to discuss nothing but the decoration of 
Lilian’s room. 

Cyril had spoken hotly of his dislike to Marion’s Medi- 
terranean tour; and Marion’s pride had been touched till 
she reminded him that she was entirely her own mistress. 


70 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


and might probably continue so to the end of the chap- 
ter. Then ensued a quarrel, only half-serious on either 
side, a quarrel that a word or a look would have righted 
in a moment. But, unfortunately, Marion had to join 
her friends the Wilmots, sooner than she anticipated, and 
thus hurried off before she could say good-bye to Cyril 
and make things straight with one little smile. 

The game of quarreling, when carried on between two 
young, ardent lovers, is a very pretty diversion, but can- 
not possibly be played at a distance, as these two found 
to their cost. Deprived of the fairy artillery of glances, 
sighs, voices, and gestures, and confined to the heavy 
ordnance of letters, they could not bring things to a 
happy conclusion. Letters were first hot, then cold, 
then after a long silence, to ask Marion how long she 
meant to play with his affections. Marion replied that 
if Cyril considered their engagement as a mere pastime, 
the sooner it was broken off the better. Cyril wrote 
rare, then non-existent, until one day Cyril wrote back 
to release her from an engagement which he said he per- 
ceived had become distasteful to her. 

This was in March. At Whitsuntide Everard spent 
some time at Malbourne, whence Cyril went to Belmin- 
ster for ordination at Trinity. He thought Cyril un- 
happy, and after the ordination he asked him, subse- 
quently to some conversation with Lilian on the subject, 
if he still cared for Marion, to which Cyril replied in the 
affirmative. Then Henry told him that Marion was 
pining and showing tendencies to consumption. She 
was the kind of woman, he said, whose health is perfect 
in happiness, but who breaks down the moment that 
elixir of life is denied. He thought that she loved Cyril 
still. 

Thus emboldened, Cyril owned himself in the wrong, 
and sued for a return to favor. He could, however, only 
afford one brief interview with Marion, since he had with 
some difficulty freed himself from the curacy at Shot- 
Dver,. which had given him a title to deacon's orders, and 
got himself placed on a mission staff in the East of Lon- 
don, where he led a semi-monastic life in a house with 
his fellow-curates, and enjoyed to the full the hard labor 
for which he had clamored so eagerly while at Shot- 
over. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


71 


The situation was eminently unfavorable to courtship, 
while it seemed to render marriage absolutely impractica- 
ble. Cyril, however, found a means of reconciling duty 
with inclination, and easily convinced his rector that nls 
labors would be equally valuable if he had a home of his 
own within easy reach of the scene of his toils, and thus 
they were to be married in the spring. The narrow 
means which so frequently darken the horizon of curates’ 
love dreams had no place in this romance, since both Cyril 
and Marion had wherewithal to keep the wolf from the 
door. 

But they are together at last, and the dark days which 
divided them are to be forgotten. 

“ When I hear the word ‘ misery/ I think of last 
spring,” said Marion laughing. 

Cyril's face clouded, and he turned away and gazed at 
the fire. “ Never think of it!” he exclaimed, suddenly 
turning a bright, animated gaze upon Marion. “ I shall 
drive it from your memory, dear, by every act and thought 
of my life.” 

Dinner, the hour so fondly welcomed by mortals in 
general, came all too soon for these; and, indeed, it was 
not till the others had taken their places at the table that 
Marion made her appearance, flushed and charming, and 
met her brother for the first time since his arrival in the 
house. 

“ This is an improvement/' he said, holding her at 
arm's length to look at her, “on the mealy faced girl I 
saw three months ago. Pray, miss, where do you get your 
rouge?” 

“Manufactured on the estate, Henry,” replied Mr. 
Maitland. “Native Malbourne rouge. Let us hope 
Cyril may acquire some of it.” 

“It comes off easily,” said Everard gravely, while Cyril 
became absorbed in Mark Antony, who sat on a stool at 
Lilian’s side at the head of the table, with his chin on a 
level with the cloth, and who was so enchanted to find 
himself with a twin on each side of him, that his deep 
mellifluous purrs threatened to drown the conversation. 

“ You will be glad to hear that Granfer is still alive 
and well, and wiser than ever, Henry,” said Mrs. Mait- 
land, who was sitting on his right, having as usual, 
resigned the head of the table to Lilian. 


72 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


“ I congratulate Malbourne, Mrs. Maitland. It could 
never go on without Granfer’s advice. And the discon- 
tented Baines has not yet blown you all up? And friend 
Wax still wields the ferule in defiance of Lilian?” 

“ But not in church/’ said Lilian. 

“ Because Lilian steals the cane if he brings it/’ added 
Marion. 

“And is anybody engaged, or born, or dead?” con- 
tinued Everard, gayly. “ By the way, what has hap- 
pened to Ben Lee? It struck me that he had been drink- 
ing this afternoon. And our friend Alma, how is she?” 

There was a dead silence for a second or two, and 
Everard’s eager gaze of inquiry met no response from the 
eyes bent resolutely on the plates. 

“ Let me send you some more beef, Henry,” said Mr. 
Maitland, looking up from his joint with sudden brisk- 
ness. “Come, where is your boasted appetite? Yes, 
bring Doctor Everard’s plate, Eliza.” 

“ But Alma? Oh, I hope there is nothing wrong with 
her?” continued Everard, looking round with a dismayed 
gaze, while Mrs. Maitland laid her hand warningly on his 
sleeve. “ Oh, Lilian, Alma is not dead?” 

“ Worse,” replied Lilian, in a low voice — “far worse.” 

There were tears, he saw trembling upon her eyelashes; 
and if ever tears resembled pearls, then, he thought, did 
those precious drops, and if ever mortal woman was dear, 
then was Lilian. He saw it all now on the instant, and 
he remembered how much Lilian had done for Alma, and 
how at Whitsuntide she had spoken of her and cared 
about her absence from the Sacrament, and so dismayed 
was he by this catastrophe that, having none of the ready 
resources and fine tact which insure social success, he 
simply, like the honest, clumsy fellow he was, dropped 
his knife and fork, and gazed horror-struck before him. 
Fortunately, at that moment Lennie, who was stretched 
on the hearth-rug, intent upon “Ivanhoe,” bethought 
himself of an important event, and took advantage of the 
silence to proclaim it. 

“I say, Henry,” he exclaimed, “what do you think? 
Fm going into trousers to-morrow.” 

“ Why, it was all over Oldport,” said Cyril. “ Bills in 
every window. ‘Oh yes! oh yes! oh yes! Know all by 
these presents that Lennie Maitland goes into trousers 
to-morrow.' ” 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 73 

66 Oh, wont I smack you by and by! ” observed Lennie, 
tranquilly returning to the jests of Brian de Bois-Guil- 
bert. 

“1 think, Cyril, you scarcely appreciate the honor 
your brother intends you,” said Mr. Maitland. “He dons 
these virile garments for the purpose of hearing your ser- 
mon. He evidently holds trousers to be conducive to a 
pious frame of mind, or at least to a certain mental 
receptivity; eh, Lennie, lad?” 

“ The unfortunate tailor’s life has been a burden to 
him in the fear that the suit would not be ready in 
time,” said Mrs. Maitland. 

“In time to hear Cywil pweach,” added Marion, laugh- 
ing. 

“ How many times have they been tried on, Lennie?” 
asked Lilian. 

“Never you mind their rubbish,” said Everard; “ask 
Miss Mawion how often she calls me Henwy?” 

“And Cywil will line the pockets with silver for you,” 
added Cyril, who was looking very happy, having, as 
Eliza observed with satisfaction, his hand locked in 
Marion^s under the table-cloth. 

No sooner had the ladies withdrawn, than Everard 
burst out, “And who is the scoundrel?” 

“Softly, softly, Henry! beware of rash judgments,” 
returned Mr. Maitland, whose face took a grieved look. 
“ Nothing is known, which is hateful to me because of 
the great wave of scandal and the dreadful scorching of 
tongues which arises about the matter. Lee, I know not 
why, assumes that it is a gentleman; and public opinion, 
and, I fear I must add, his reputation, point to Ingram 
Swaynestone. Sir Lionel has spoken to him, but he abso- 
lutely denies it; and, indeed — ” 

“ In short,” broke in Cyril, who was extremely busy 
with some walnuts on his plate, “the less said about 
these miserable scandals the better.” 

“ True, quite true,” said his father with a heavy sigh. 

“ But Alma! the little girl we used to play with at the 
Temple, with Lilian, and often Ingram, and the girl 
Swaynestones! ” cried Henry. “I cannot believe any 
wrong of her. She has been wronged — of that I am 
sure.” 

“ Truly, I had never dreamed of such trouble for Alma, 


74 THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 

poor child!” said Mr. Maitland. “ Elsewhere in the 
parish, of course, one dreads such things, knowing their 
temptations. It is a heavy grief for me, Henry, as you 
may imagine.” 

“ And for Lilian,” added Everard. “ Yes, I know how 
you love your spiritual children, sir, and can imagine 
your distress. And poor Lee, he was so proud of her. 
He is sullen, I see; a sure sign of grief. Oh, I hope he is 
not unkind to her! ” 

“The step-mother is hard, and has a sharp tongue! 
She forgets what poor Alma did for her child. Alto- 
gether, it is a sad, sad, history. The Temple, I suppose, 
holds more unhappiness than any house in the county.” 

“ Oh, really, my dear father,” exclaimed Cyril, who 
seemed pained beyond endurance, “you must not take it 
so to heart! She is not the first — ” 

“By Jove, Maitland!” interrupted Everard, “you are 
the last man from whom I should expect an echo of 
Mephistopheles. He never said anything more diabolical 
than that — f Sie ist die Erste nicht 

Cyril colored so hotly that he exhibited the phenome- 
non of a black blush, while Mr. Maitland hastened to say 
that Cyril was in a different position from Faust, who 
had wrought the wrong. “And then,” he added, 
“ Cyril is doubtless weary of sin and sorrow, of which, in 
his parish, he must have far more than we in our simple 
rustic home have any idea of, busy as Satan undoubtedly 
is everywhere.” 

“ Quite so,” returned Cyril, wearily. “ My words 
sounded unfortunately, Everard; but, as my father sug- 
gests, when one has breakfasted and lunched for weeks 
upon peccant parishioner, one does not enjoy the same 
dish at dinner.” 

Everard's rejoinder was prevented by the intrusion of a 
sunny head at the door, and the clear voice of Winnie 
was heard crying, “Do make haste! Me and Lennie 
want to know what is in that basket, and Lilian won't let 
us.” Whereupon Cyril sprang up and chased the de- 
lighted child through the hall and into the drawing- 
room, where she took refuge, screaming, in Lilian's 
dress. 

The basket which so stimulated the children's curiosity 
was well known to contain the young men's Christmas 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


75 


gifts to the family, and was forthwith uncovered amid a 
scene of joyous turbulence, and had its contents distrib- 
uted. 

The task of collecting the parcels in the basket and 
conveying them to the drawing-room had been performed 
by Eliza with thrills of delicious agony, for it was almost 
beyond human nature not to take at least one peep at a 
packet containing the very ribbon she longed for, and at 
another revealing glimpses of a perfect love of a shawl, 
which proved to be destined for cook. However, she 
appeared with a perfectly demure countenance when 
fetched by Lennie, with the other maids, to receive her 
presents. By that time Mr. Maitland had become lost to 
all earthly cares, in an arm-chair, with an old battered 
volume Everard had picked up at a book-stall in Paris 
for him; Winnie was wondering if some fairy had in- 
formed Henry that a fishing-rod of her very own had 
been her soul's unattainable star for months; and Bennie 
was dancing round the room with an illustrated “Don 
Quixote " clasped in his arms. 

It was pleasant to see Cyril making his gifts. Each 
was offered with a suitable word, tender or droll, accord- 
ing to the recipient, and with the grace that an emperor 
might have envied, though a carping observer would have 
detected that the gifts themselves had been purchased 
as nearly as possible at the same shop. As for Everard, 
he made his offerings with a sneaking air, and seemed 
glad to get them off his hands. He threw the “ Don 
Quixote" at Lennie, with “Here you scamp!" and 
placed the invalid reading-stand by Mrs. Maitland, with 
an awkward, “I don't know if this thing will be any good 
to you." 

“ Why, Henry, who told you that father's life has 
been a burden to him for months for want of that old 
edition?" asked Lilian. 

“ He is a wizard; he should be burned," laughed Cyril, 
reflecting inwardly that while his gifts cost money, 
Everard's cost time and thought and infinite trouble in 
hunting out. 

“But ain’t Lilian to have anything?" inquired the 
ingenuous Lennie; for Lilian and Cyril never gave each 
other presents — they had things so much in common, and 
Everard appeared to have forgotten her. 


76 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


Lilian appealed as usual, to Mark Antony for sym- 
pathy, and Everard grew very hot, while Cyril absorbed 
himself in fitting the bracelet he had given Marion 
upon her slender arm. Then Lilian looked up. 

“It was horrid of you to forget me, Henry," she said. 

“I didn't forget you," stammered Everard; “but the 
.thing was so trilling I hadn't the courage — It's only a 
photograph of the picture which inspired Browning's 
‘ Guardian Angel.' Here it is, if you think it worth hav- 
ing. You said you would give anything to see Guercino's 
picture at Fano." 

“Oh, Henry, how very kind and thoughtful of you!" 
exclaimed Lilian, her face transfigured with pleasure. 
“ But I thought there was no photograph? " 

“Well, no; but young Stobart was doing Italy in the 
autumn, and I got him to go to Fano with his camera. 
It wasn't far out of his way," he replied, in a tone of 
apology. 

Lennie's solicitude being relieved, he and the others 
were absorbed each after his own fashion; no one observed 
these two. Lilian looked up at Henry, who had thrown 
himself into a low chair by her side, so that their faces 
were on a level. Her eyes were dewy and bright; they 
gazed straight into his for a minute, and then fell. 
“ You had it done for me," she murmured. 

It was the crowning moment of Everard's happy night. 
He bent over the spirit-like hand resting on the cat, and 
unseen pressed his lips to it. He knew that Lilian loved 
him, and knew that he loved her. He said nothing more; 
it was enough bliss for one day. 


CHAPTER VII. 

^ Before going to rest that night, Mr. Maitland led 
Everard to his study, and there subjected him to a search- 
ing cross-examination on the subject of Cyril's care-worn 
and unhealthy appearance, which Everard referred to his 
overzeal in his labors, and the excessive austerities which 
he practised. 

“ It would be all very well for him to mortify his flesh 


THE SILENCE OF LEAN MAITLAND. 


77 


if he had too much of it to balance his spirit,” Everard 
observed; “but as a matter of fact, he has too little.” 

“ Cyril is sensitive,” his father replied; “ his nerves are 
too tensely strung, like those of all extremely refined and 
poetic natures. We thought, Lilian and I, that it was 
the estrangement from Marion which was preying on him. 
It was that which caused him to leave Shotover, and 
plunge into this terrific London work — that and, of 
course, higher motives.” 

“Cyril, though healthy, is delicate,” replied Everard. 
“ He ought never to fast; he cannot bear it, especially 
when working. His brain will give way under such dis- 
cipline. Observe him to-morrow when he preaches. 
There is too much nervous excitement.” 

The next morning Cyril did not appear till the end of 
breakfast, and then took nothing but a cup of coffee. 

“ Really, Cyril, I did think Sunday at least was a feast- 
day!” cried Everard, pausing in his own manful assault 
on a well-piled plate of beef. 

“ But Cyril is to celebrate to-day; he must fast,” 
Lilian explained; and then Everard observed that Mr. 
Maitland’s breakfast consisted of nothing, and groaned 
within himself, and asked his friends if they considered 
it decorous for clergymen to faint in the midst of public 
worship. 

“ When a man has to work, he should feed himself 
into proper condition,” he said to unheeding ears. 

After breakfast, the Maitland family repaired in a body 
to the Sunday-school, and Everard went out to smoke a 
pipe alone, and, the frost being keen, he wore an over- 
coat, finding one of his own in the hall. He had some 
difficulty in putting it on, and could not by any means 
induce it to meet across the chest. This gave him great 
satisfaction. “ It cannot be that my Sunday-go-to-meet- 
ing clothes take up so much room,” he mused. “ Ho; I 
am increasing in girth round the chest. Who could 
imagine that one night’s happiness and country air would 
produce such an effect? A new scientific fact.” 

It was pleasant on the lawn in the frosty Sunday still- 
ness. The sunbeams danced on the evergreens and 
smiled on the Shotover parklands; a robin sang its cheer- 
fully pathetic song; and a flock of rooks uttered their 
breezy caws in the pale blue above his head. Everard 


78 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


smoked with profound enjoyment; he thought of last 
night's enchantment/ and the promise he had just ex- 
tracted from Lilian to sit with him in the Rectory pew 
instead of with the school-children. His hands were 
thrust for warmth into his coat-pockets, and in one of 
them he felt the square outline of a letter which he drew 
out, wondering — since his habits were neat and method- 
ical, as became a student of natural science — how he 
came to leave a letter there. The letter, however, had 
no envelope and no address. He opened it, and found, 
in the half-formed, clear writing of an unlearned person, 
probably some patient in humble life, the following: 

“No, I will never, never marry you. What good 
could that do me, now you do not love me no more — me 
that loved you better than Heaven and her own poor 
soul? Would I like to see you miserable, and spoil your 
prospex? To marry the likes of me would ruin you, and 
how could that make me happy? Marry her; it is better 
for you. I have done wrong for love of you, and God 
will punish me. But you are sorry, and will be forgiven. 
Farewell forever. 

“ Your broken-hearted 

“ A.'' 

The gracious light of the wintry morning seemed to 
fade out of the pale pure sky ; there was no more delight 
in the robin's song ; the bright crystals of the hoar-frost 
sparkled in vain for Everard. “ WRy, why are there such 
things?" he murmured. “ Why was Cyril's echo of 
Mephistopheles so much more poignant in its cynicism 
because of its truth? " 

The weak suffering, the strong going scot-free; Alcestis 
plunging, love-radiant, into the darkness of Hades, 
while Admetus rejoices in the light of heaven; women 
trusting, and men deceiving — what a world! All the 
confused misery of the painful insoluble riddle of earth 
seemed to awake and trouble the clear happiness of 
Everard’s soul at the story told in the poor little scrap of 
paper, the more pathetic for its bad spelling and artless 
grammar. And how came such an epistle in his pocket? 
Doubtless some friend had borrowed his coat; some heed- 
less rackety medical student, perchance, and flavored it 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


79 


with tobacco and correspondence. “ Sie ist die Erste 
nicht” the rooks seemed to say in their pleasant, fresh 
morning caws. 

But now the bells came chiming slowly on the clear 
■lir, those dear, drowsy three strokes which awoke in his 
heart so many echoes of home and boyhood and sweet 
innocent life beneath the beloved roof where Lilian 
dwelt; bells calling people to come and pray, to think of 
God and heaven, and forsake all the sin and sorrow of 
the troubled earth — calling people to hear how even such 
black things as the letter told of might be made white 
again like snow; to hear the kind fatherly counsels of 
such as Mr. Maitland or Cyril. And his heart swelled 
when he thought that Cyril had devoted his stainless 
youth, his bright promise, and his splendid gifts to a 
calling which, however vainly, tried to stem the tide of 
all this mad, sad evil, and lift men out of the mire of 
earth's misery. How beautiful to have Cyril's faith and 
the power of^ thus consecrating himself! How poor in 
comparison his own career, devoted merely to the healing 
of men's bodies, to the satisfaction of noble desire for 
knowledge, and the widening the horizon of men's 
thoughts! 

Like all thinkers, and especially those whose thoughts 
dwell much on the study of natural facts, Everard had 
many doubts, and often feared that the Christianity so 
dear to him through instinct, training, and association, 
might be, after all, but a fairy dream. But the atmos- 
phere of Malbourne, and more especially the influences of 
Mr. Maitland's genuine and practical piety, together with 
Cyril's bright enthusiasm, quenched these doubts as noth- 
ing else could; and now the village bells fell like balm on 
his troubled soul, and he responded with cheery good 
temper to Lennie, who came bounding over the lawn in 
the proud consciousness of trousers, crying, “Come 
along, Henry, and look at Lilian's donkey." 

He thrust the paper in his pocket, and taking the little 
fellow's hand, trotted off with him toward Winnie, who 
was approaching them at headlong pace, with curls 
streaming in the wind, and soon seized his other hand, 
and led him to the meadow, where he beheld one of the 
sorriest beasts he had ever set eyes on, cropping the 
frosty grass, and winking lazily in the sun. 


80 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


“What can Lilian do with such a creature? ” he asked. 

“Oh, she makes it happy like all her things,” replied 
Lennie. “Won't you stare when you see her three- 
legged cat, and the fox with the broken leg she has in the 
stable!” 

“She likes hurt things,” commented Winnie, while 
Lennie related how Lilian met this donkey one day in the 
road leading oyer the downs. It was harnessed to a cart 
laden with vegetables, and had fallen between the shafts, 
where its owner, a brutal, bad fellow, well known in Mel- 
bourne, was furiously belaboring it. 

“Didn't he stare when Lilian caught him by the collar 
and pulled him off the donkey! ” said Lennie. “Then 
he fell all of a tremble, and Lilian told him he would be 
sent to prison or fined. And he said he was too poor to 
buy another donkey, and couldn't help this one growing 
old and weak. So Lilian gave him ten shillings for 
it.” 

“Dear Lilian!” Everard said to himself, as he looked 
at the wretched beast, with its stiff limbs and body 
scarred by old sores and stripes. “ Which do you love 
best, Winnie, Lilian or Cyril?” 

“ Cyril,” replied both children, unhesitatingly, but 
could give no reason for their preference, until Lennie, 
after long cogitation, said, “ He does make a f ellow T laugh 
so.” 

Everard smiled, and thought of Wordsworth's boy with 
his weather-cock. The day was warmer now, and bidding 
Lennie run in-doors with his great coat, he set off to 
church with the children. 

It was a matter of time for a person of any considera- 
tion to get through Malbourne Church-yard, for there, 
grouped upon either side the porch, lounged a little 
crowd of Malbourne worthies, solemnly passing the 
church-goers in review, and headed, of course, by Gran- 
fer in a clean white smock-frock, and with his hale old 
many-colored visage and veined hands looking purplish in 
the frosty air. Tom Hale was there, making a bright 
centre to the cool-toned picture in his red tunic and spot- 
less, well-brushed clothes; while Jim, with open breast 
and sailor garb, lent a bit of picturesque that not even 
the Sunday coats of Baine's manufacture could quite 
subdue. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


81 


Lennie held up his head, and felt that his trousers were 
making a deep impression ; while Everard stopped and 
wished a good-morning to them all, smock-frocks, Sun- 
day coats, and uniforms, and received a little dignified 
patronage from Granfer, who had always regarded him 
with some disparagement, as being neither a Swaynestone 
nor a Maitland, but a mere appendage to the latter 
family, a circumstance which helped to render Granfer 
the delight of Everard's life. 

The present moment did not find Granfer conversa- 
tional, his mental powers being concentrated on observing 
the animated scene before him. There was Farmer Long, 
with his wife and daughters in their warm scarlets and 
purples, to scrutinize as they strolled along the road and 
over the churchyard path ; then the more distant farmers, 
who drove up to the lychgate in old-fashioned gigs, and, 
having dropped their families, hastened to the Sun to 
put up the strong, coarse-limbed horses ; then came the 
Garretts from Northover, new people, whom Malbourne 
regarded, with a mixture of scorn and envy, as mere 
mushroom pretenders. They came on foot, their own 
gates being but a stone’s-throw from the church, a hand- 
some family of sons and daughters, coeval with the Mait- 
lands. To 1 them Granfer’s salutation was almost infini- 
tesimal in its elaborate graduation. Then, blending 
with the drowsy chime of the three bells, arose the clatter 
of hoofs and the roll of wheels, and the Swaynestone 
landau, with its splendid high-stepping horses, swept 
easily up to the gate, the silver-mounted harness, the 
silken coats of the steeds, the panels, and the revolving 
wheel-spokes flashing in the sun. Granfer did not know 
it, but perhaps he. dimly felt that the splendor of this ap- 
parition somehow enlarged and beautified the dim, nar- 
row horizon of his life. 

Ben Lee’s very livery, not to speak of his skilful and 
effective driving, contributed vaguely to -Granfer’s impor- 
tance; as also did the courteous elegance and finely built 
form of Sir Lionel, and the manner in which, the foot- 
man having retired at a look, he handed out Lady 
Swaynestone and his daughter Ethel, in their velvets and 
furs. But Granfer was distressed to see that Ben Lee 
no longer drove up with his former dash, and turned his 
shining steeds in the direction of the Sun with no more 
6 


82 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


consequence than if he had been driving a mere brewer's 
dray. “ Ah, Ben ain't the man he was!" he muttered, 
after having helped Sir Lionel and his family with the 
sunshine of his approbation into church. 

Then came the tripping, whispering procession of 
school-children, led by the rector, followed by Wax, who 
was involved in the double misery of new Sunday broad- 
cloth and the absence of his cane, without which emblem 
of authority he was ever a lost man; and last of all came 
Cyril, who found time for a word and a smile for each of 
the group, and left them all exhilarated by his passing 
presence as if by a draught of wine. Then the bells 
ceased, the loungers entered the church, and Granfer him- 
self, the sunshine warming his wintry white hair, walked 
slowly with the aid of his stout oak staff up the centre 
aisle to his allotted place. 

He was already seated, and Cyril's musical voice had 
given a deeper pathos to the sentence, “ Hide thy face 
from my sins," when Ingram Swaynestone and his sister 
Maude entered, rosy and fresh from their long brisk walk 
in the frosty morning. Ingram Swaynestone was tall and 
fair and strongly built, the typical young Englishman, 
who belongs to no class and only one country, physically 
perfect, good-tempered, and well-spoken, with a perfect 
digestion and a nervous system undistraught by intellec- 
tual burdens and riddles of the painful earth. His ap- 
pearance with his pretty, fair-haired sister caused a tiny 
stir, almost imperceptible, like a summer breath through 
ripe corn, amongst the fairer portion of the congregation, 
with whom he was extremely popular, not only on account 
of his good looks and known appreciation of feminine 
charms, but also because of a faint delicious aroma of 
wickedness that hung about his name. 

The devotions of several undoubtedly pious young 
maidens were more than once interrupted for the purpose 
of looking to see if he was looking, which he certainly 
was at every one of them in turn, when opportunity per- 
mitted ; while Cyril’s beautiful voice rang through the 
church, and Everard and Lilian, who had always loved 
and admired the simple majesty of the Liturgy, felt that 
they had never before known its real beauty. 

When he read of the Massacre of the Innocents, one or 
two women cried. The tone in which he read that 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


83 


Kachel was weeping for her children and would not 
be comforted, poignantly reminded them that they could 
never be comforted for their lost little ones buried out- 
side in the sunny churchyard. Henry, and Lilian, and 
Marion, and the .children all gazed up with admiring 
affection at the beautiful young priest standing white- 
robed outside the chancel at the eagle lecturn, H^nry 
thinking that the music of Cyril's voice alone surpassed 
any chanted cathedral service. 

Often in after years did Henry and Lilian think of that 
sweet Sunday morning with refreshment : the solemn 
beauty of the old church, with its heavy Norman arches; 
the sunshine stealing in, mellow and soft, through the 
south windows and tinging the snowy frock of Granfer, 
who sat just below the chancel, and leaned forward on 
his staff in an attitude of rapt attention; the innocent 
looks of the choir-boys, amongst whom was Dicky Stev- 
ens, fourth in descent from Granfer, and whom Litean 
had delivered from the tyranny of the rod; and Mr. Mait- 
land's reverend aspect, as he bent his silvered head and 
listened to Cyril's pure voice. 

But the moment which lingered in his heart's memory 
till his dying day was that in which he knelt with Marion 
and Lilian and the villagers at the altar, and received the 
holy symbols from Cyril's own consecrated hands. He 
never forgot Cyril's pale, saint-like features and white- 
stoled form, the crimson from a martyr's robe in the 
south chancel window staining in a long bar the priest's 
breast and hands and the very chalice he held. 

“I was so glad," Lilian said, when they were walking 
home together, Marion having stopped to speak to some 
one, “to see you there, Henry, because Cyril is often 
troubled about your daring speculations." 

“ Your father never fails to still my doubts, Lilian," 
he replied. “ There is that in his plain, unpretending 
sermons which carries conviction straight into one's heart. 
Sermons, as a rule, simply bore me; but Mr. Maitland's — 
Well, you know he always was my beau ideal of a parish 
priest." 

Lilian's face kindled. “You are the only person who 
really appreciates my father," she replied. “Even Cyril 
does not quite know what gifts he has buried m this liny 
rustic place, and willingly and consciously buried." 


84 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


“ I honor his intellect, but still more his heart, which 
speaks not only in his studiously plain sermons, but even 
more in his life. Cyril could take no better model." 

“ True; yet we all think Cyril destined to something 
higher," replied Lilian. 

“By the way, Henry," said Cyril at luncheon, “I 
took your overcoat by mistake this morning. I hope 
it didn’t put you out much ; my things are all too small 
for you.” 

“That fellow is always appropriating my property, 
and I am too big to retaliate," growled Everard, who had 
forgotten all about the tight overcoat of the morning. 

“ Oh, I say, Cywil," broke in Lennie, “ wasn’t 
Ingwam Swaynestone in a wage with you for not pweach- 
ing this morning ! He came to church on purpose, and 
he does hate going to church in the winter, he says, 
because the cold nips the girls’ noses and makes them 
look so ugly." 

“ He doesn’t mean that nonsense, Lennie," said Mr. 
Maitland, laughing gently. “He pays his rector a fine 
compliment, to say the least of it," he added. 

Cyril, who was by no means making up for his morning 
fast, looked as if he thought Ingram was more likely to 
be interested in the color of girls’ noses than the quality 
of any sermons. Then he learned how Ingram had called 
with offers of guns and horses to Everard and himself, 
and had been at play with Winnie, who was now in dire 
disgrace and condemned to go without pudding, in 
consequence of having made Ingram’s nose bleed. 

“ Oh, really, mother ! ’’ he exclaimed, stroking the 
bright curls brushing his arms, “ isn’t that rather hard? 
Winnie did not mean it; it might have been her nose. 
Do you think Ingram will go without pudding, Win ? 
Let her off, mother. I never saw a little girl behave bet- 
ter in church." 

Whereupon Winnie was respited, after many comments 
from her elders on her rough ways and romping habits 
and constant breakages, which it appeared, were a source 
of perennial disgrace to the little girl. 

Cyril had very tender ways with children, and was 
almost as sorry for hurt things as Lilian. That very 
afternoon a child stumbled and fell on the way to church, 
and Everard saw him slip aside in his long cassock, and 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


85 


pick up the howling, dust-covered urchin with some 
merry, tender observation, wipe away the tears and blood 
with his own spotless handkerchief before Wax had time 
to bring out a denunciation on the brat's heedlessness, 
and comfort him finally with pence, though the parson's 
bell had rung, and Mrs. Wax had come to the end of her 
voluntary on the harmonium, and begun over again in 
despair. 

The morning congregation had received some additions, 
to wit, those lazy Sabbatarians who kept their day of rest 
so literally as to get up too late to go to church in the 
morning, those mothers too fatigued by performing the 
family toilets to perform their own, and those who cooked 
the Sunday dinners and minded the babies, the majority 
of which latter accompanied their parents to afternoon 
service. It was pleasant, too, to observe that Ingram 
Swaynestone's piety had conquered his pain at the eclipse 
of feminine beauty, and that he helped to swell the little 
crowd. 

When Cyril ascended the pulpit, he looked round the 
dim church with an anxious, searching gaze, and Lilian 
observed that his eye rested with apprehension on the 
Lee's pew, and he appeared relieved when he saw Mrs. 
Lee standing there alone. Then he glanced in the 
direction of the Swaynestone servant's pew, where Ben 
Lee sat, glum and downcast, and Judkins, with a hag- 
gard look, held his hymn-book before his face. They 
were singing, “ Hark, the herald angels," Job Stubbs and 
Dickie Stevens bringing out the treble with a will and 
the basses bearing their parts manfully. 

Cyril distinguished all the voices — those of Lilian and 
Everard, Marion and the children, Sir Lionel and his 
daughters, the rectory maids, the smock-frocks, Tom and 
Jim Hale, Baines, the tailor, who was only an occasional 
church-goer, and loved to air his bass occasionally in 
orthodox ears— he heard even Granfer's own tremulous 
quaver, which had been a tenor of local celebrity, and a 
crowd of young memories rushed over him. He clutched 
the edge of the pulpit, regardless of the holly- wreath 
which encircled it, and pricked his fingers, and, when 
the last notes of “ Herald angels " died away in the final 
quaver of an old woman half a bar behind, was silent for 
a few moments. 


86 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


At last he recovered himself, and gave out his text — 
“ Keep innocency, and take heed to the thing that is 
right, for that shall bring a man peace at the last.” 

He felt them all gazing up at him — Lennie and Winnie, 
with their innocent eyes and mouths wide open to hear 
“ Oywil pweach ; ” his mother, who seldom ventured to 
church ; Farmer Long and his family ; the well-known 
villagers ; Granfer, with his head on one side, like an old 
bird, the better to hear him ; Ben Lee — yes, Ben Lee was 
looking ; his father in the chancel was looking also. 

Cyril turned pale ; Marion caught her breath, but was 
soon quieted by the clear, pure notes of the young preach- 
er’s voice. He could not but pause, he said, before that 
congregation, and question himself deeply and sternly 
before he presumed to address them. They had seen him 
grow up among them. Many were his elders, had held 
him in their arms, chidden the faults of his boyhood, 
taught him, cared for him ; many had been his playmates 
and companions, known his weaknesses, shared, perchance, 
in his escapades. How should he speak to them ? 

Everard disapproved of these personal remarks; and 
yet, when he heard the silver tones of Cyril’s voice, his 
easy flowing sentences, and the delicacy of his allusions, 
he could not but be charmed. The fact was, as he re- 
flected, that Cyril could do what no other man might, 
and still charm. His very faults and weaknesses, were, 
in a manner, endearing. 

He felt it, nevertheless, a great privilege, he continued, 
to be placed there, and he asked of their patience to hear 
him, for the sake of his office. Then, referring to his 
manuscript he briefly touched upon the story of the Y mar- 
tyred innocents and its lessons; and not till then did the 
profound snore of William Grove and other accustomed 
sleepers arise. Every creature had kept awake during 
the unaccustomed prologue, and, indeed, many of the 
habitual sleepers were still awake, considering it only 
fair to Mr. Cyril. Then the preacher spoke of the 
beauty of innocence, and his manner, hitherto so quiet, 
changed, and became more and more impassioned, till 
some of the sleepers woke and gazed about them with 
dazed wonder, as the tones of that clarion voice besought 
them all to keep innocency, that pearl beyond all price, 
that one costly treasure without which there was no light 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


87 


in the summer sun, nor any joy in youth and spring-time. 
Then he painted the tortures of a guilty conscience, the 
agony beyond all agonies, with such power and passion, 
and such a richness of poetic diction and picturesque 
imagery, that many a man trembled, some women sobbed, 
and poor Ben Lee uttered a stifled groan. 

Everard grew uncomfortable. He began to fear some 
unseemly hysteric excitement in the little congregation, 
and was distressed to find Marion and Mrs. Maitland cry- 
ing without reserve. Lilianas eyes were moist, but she 
did not cry; she was pale with a reflection of Cyril's 
white passion. Mr. Maitland covered his face with his 
surplice. He too was uneasy, and more affected than he 
liked to acknowledge to himself; yet he hoped that 
Alma's betrayer might be present and have his heart 
touched. The dusk was falling fast in the dim, deep- 
shadowed building; two or three sparks of light glowed 
among the white robes of the choir, and up among the 
dark arches Cyril's face showed haggard and agonized in 
the little isle of light made by the two pale tapers on 
each side of him in the darkness. 

Long did the little congregation remember that scene: 
the hush of attention, broken only by an occasional sob 
from some woman — for most of the sleepers were awake 
now, and dimly conscious of the unaccustomed passion 
breaking the drowsy air around them — the great growing 
shadows in the fast-darkening church; the mass of awe- 
struck faces pale in the gray gloom; the rosy gleams of 
the scattered tapers on the choristers' surplices ; and up 
above them, from the heart of the mysterious darkness, 
the one beautiful, impassioned face in the lonely radiance, 
ana the mighty musical voice pealing forth the unutter- 
able anguish of sin; and the light which subsequent 
events threw upon it only rendered it the more impres- 
sive. 

“ It is true, indeed," said the preacher, suddenly easing 
the intolerable tension of his passion, and speaking in 
calmer tones, “that what a holy writer has called ‘the 
princely heart of innocence,' may be regained after long 
anguish of penitence and prayer, but the consequences of 
sin roll on in ever-growing echoes, terrible with the thun- 
der of everlasting doom: the contrite heart is utterly 
broken, and the life forever saddened and marred. Inno- 


88 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


cence once lost, my brethren, the old careless joy of youth 
never returns. Oh, thou, whosoever thou be, man, 
woman, or even child; thou who hast once stained thy 
soul with deadly sin, f not poppy nor mandragora, nor all 
the drowsy syrups of the world, shall ever medicine thee 
to that sweet sleep which thou ow'dst yesterday/ 

“Yet despair not, beloved brethren,” he added, with 
flutelike softness, for his voice had again risen in ago- 
nized intensity; “there is forgiveness and healing for all. 
But oh! keep innocency, keep innocency; guard and 
treasure that inestimable, irrecoverable possession, that 
pure, perennial source of joyous days and peaceful nights, 
and take heed, take watchful heed, of the thing that is 
right. Keep innocency, oh, little children, sitting here 
in the holy church this evening, beneath the eyes of 1 
those who love and guard you — you whose souls are yet 
fresh with the dew of baptism, keep, oh, keep your inno- 
cency! Keep it, youths and children, who wear the chor- 
ister's white robe! Keep innocency, young men and 
maidens, full of heart and hope; keep this one pearl, I 
pray you, for there is no joy without it! And you, men 
and women of mature years, strong to labor and bowed 
with cares and toils innumerable — you who, in the hurry 
of life's hot noon, have scarce time to think of heaven, 
with its white robes and peace, yet see that you keep 
innocency through all! And you, standing amid the long 
golden light of life's evening, aged men and women who 
wear the honored crown of white hairs, watch still, and 
see that you guard your priceless treasure even to the last. 
Keep innocency, I conjure you, for that shall bring a 
man peace at the last! Peace, peace,'' he repeated, with 
a yearning intensity that culminated in a deep, hard sob, 
“peace! " 

He paused, and there was a dense silence for some 
seconds, and Everard saw that the blue brilliance of his 
eyes was blurred with tears; while Sir Lionel and Ingram 
experienced a sense of profound relief in the hope that 
the too-exciting sermon was at an end. The congrega- 
tion rose joyously to their feet, eased of a strain that was 
becoming intolerable. 

When Cyril had left the pulpit, his father pronounced 
the benediction on the kneeling crowd in his calm, sweet 
tones, so restful after the storm and passion of the young 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


89 


preacher’s richly compassed voice. But the blessing did 
not reach Cyril’s distracted soul. Taking advantage of 
the shadows when he reached his place in the chancel, he 
glided swiftly behind the pillars, like some hurt spirit 
fleeing from the benison that would heal it, till he 
reached the vestry, where he threw himself in a chair 
behind a screen, and covered his face. When Mr. Mait- 
land in due time followed the choir thither, he did not at 
first observe the silent, ghostly figure in the shadow; and 
then becoming aware of him, he left him to himself till 
the choristers were gone, thinking that he was praying. 
But on approaching nearer, he was startled to hear 
strong sobs issue from the veiled figure. 

“ My dear boy,” he remonstrated, “ this will never do. 
Too much excitement is unwholesome both for priest and 
people. Come master yourself, dear lad. You are 
unwell; this fasting is not wise. Henry was right.” 

“ Oh, father,” sobbed Cyril, “it is not the fasting! 
Oh, shut the door, and let us be alone, and let me tell 
you all — all ! ” 

“Come, come,” said the gentle old man; “calm your- 
self, and tell me whatever you like later. At present we 
are both worn out, and need change of thought. You 
have a great gift, dear fellow, and I trust your words 
have struck home to at le:,st one conscience — ” 

“They have — oh, they have indeed! ” repeated Cyril, 
with, increasing agitation; “and that miserable con- 
science — Oh, father, father! how can I tell you — ?” 

“ Hush! hush! This is hysteria, as Everard predicted. 
Say no more; I insist upon your silence. Remember 
where we are! Drink this water. Stay! I will call 
Henry; ” and Mr. Maitland went quickly into the church, 
where Everard was yet lingering with Lilian, who always 
had various errands connected with the parish to transact 
in the porch, and beckoned him to the vestry. 

Cyril did not resist his father’s will any more, but 
sank back with a moan, half of anguish, half of relief, 
and listened meekly to the rough kindliness of Everard, 
and the gentle remonstrances of his father. 

“ This is a pretty scene, Mr. Maitland,” observed Ever- 
ard, on entering the vestry. “111? Of course he is ill, 
after exciting himself on an empty stomach! The end 
of such goings-on as these, my friend, is Bedlam. Take 


90 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


this brandy, and then go quietly home and get a good 
sleep*, and let us have no more of this nonsense, for good- 
ness’ sake.” 

So Cyril did as they hid him, and held his peace. Had 
he but acted on his heart’s impulse, and spoken out then 
as he wished, he would have produced sorrow and dismay 
indeed, but the long, lingering tragedy which was to 
involve so many lives would have been forever averted. 

Once, perhaps, in each crisis of our lives, our guardian 
angel stands before us with his hands full of golden 
opportunity, which, if we grasp, it is well with us; but 
woe to us if we turn our backs sullenly on our gentle 
visitor, and scorn his celestial gift! Never again is the 
gracious treasure offered, and the favorable moment 
returns no more. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

“Ay, you med all mark my words!” said Granfer, 
looking solemnly around from under the shadow of his 
bushy gray eyebrows. “ Pve a zaid it, and I’ll zay it 
agen — ay, that I ’ool, let they go agen it as may! You 
med all mark my words, I zay, Queen Victoree’ll make 
he a bishop avore she’s done wi’ ’un.” 

“ Ay,” chorused the listening group, who were stand- 
ing around the village oracle in the churchyard, looking 
phantom-like in the pale blending of sunset and moon- 
rise; and then there was a thoughtful pause, during 
which Granfer’s shrewd gray eyes scrutinized each face 
with an air of challenge. 

“Ter’ble vine praiching zure-ly,” observed Hale, the 
wheelwright. 

“Vine! you med well zay that,” rejoined Granfer, 
sternly. “ I tell ’ee all, there never was praiching that 
vine in all Malbourne lands avore! Ay, I’ve a zaid it, 
and I’ll zay it agen! ” 

“ Made me sweat, ’ee did,” observed Straun, the black- 
smith, whose Sunday appearance was a caricature on his 
burly working-day presentment; for broadcloth of Baine’s 
rough fashioning now hid the magnificent muscular arms 
and bare neck; a tall hat, too small in the head, replaced 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


91 


the careless, smoke-browned cap of every day; and the 
washing and shaving to which his face had been sub- 
jected gave it an almost unnatural pallor. 

“ Ye rued well sweat, Jarge Straun, when you thinks 
on yer zins,” reflected Granfer, piously, 

“'Twas ter'ble vine; but darned if I knows what 'twas 
all about!” said William Grove, scratching his curly 
head with some perplexity. 

“ Ah ! Mr. Cyril, he have a dale too much laming for 
the likes o' you, Willum,” returned Granfer, graciously 
condescending to William's weaker intellect; “let he 
alone for that. Why, Lard love 'ee, Willum, I couldn't 
make out more'n a quarter on't mezelf, that I couldn't, 
I tell 'ee ! A vast o' laming in that lad's head.'' 

“ Ay, and some on it was poetry ; I yerd the jingle of 
it,” said sailor Jim. 

“ Master, now,” continued Granfer, settling himself 
more comfortably against a tombstone, and leaning 
forward on his stick — “Lard 'a massey, any vool med 
understand he ! He spakes in his discoorses jest as 
though he was a zitting in front of vire atop of a cricket, 
and a zaying, f Well, Granfer, and how be the taaties a- 
coming up ? ' or, f Granfer, think o' yer zins avore you 
blaimes other volk.' Ay, that's how he spakes, bless 
'un ! He don't know no better, he don't. Can't spake 
no grander than the Lard have give 'un grace to.” 

“ Master's a good man,” said Sfcraun, defiantly. 
“ He've a done his duty by we this thirty year.” 

“ Ay, he's well enough, master is,” continued Granfer, 
in a tolerant manner ; “ I never had no vault to vind wi' 
he, bless 'un ! A vine vamily he've had, too ! He've a 
done so well as he could ; but a never was no praicher to 
spake on, I tell 'ee.” 

“ Ter'ble pretty what Mr. Cyril said about preaching to 
them as knowed him a boy,” said Tom Hale. “ Them 
esskypades, now,” he added, fondly, as he caressed his 
mustache and struck one of his martial attitudes. 

“ What's a esskypade, Granfer ?” inquired a smock- 
frock. 

“ A esskypade,” returned Granfer, slowly and thought- 
fully — “ a esskypade, zo to zay, is, in a way o’ spaking, 
what you med call a zet-to — a zart of a scrimmage like ; ” 
and he fixed his glittering eye fiercely, yet half doubt- 


92 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


fully, on Tom Hale’s face, as much as to challenge him 
to deny it. 

“ Just so,” responded Tom. “I said to meself, I said, 
‘Mr. Cyril is thinking of the set-to we had together in 
father’s yard that Saturday afternoon ; that’s what he 
means by his esskypades.’ ” 

“Ay, and you licked him well,” added Jim, eagerly ; 
“ that was summat like a fight, Tom.” 

“ Master Cyril had to he carried home, and kep’ his bed 
for a week ; and Tom, he couldn’t see out of his eyes next 
day,” commented the elder Hale, with pride in his 
brother’s prowess. 

“Ay, you dreshed ’un, zure enough, Tom,” commented 
Granfer, graciously. 

“ He took a deal of licking, and hit out like a man,” 
said the modest warrior, who loved Cyril with the pro- 
found affection inspired only by a vanquished foe. 

Tom had fought sterner battles since. He had been 
through the Indian Mutiny campaign, and known the 
grim realties of Lucknow; but his heart still glowed, as 
he saw before him, in his mind’s eye, the prostrate form 
of Cyril on the grass among the timber of the wheel- 
wright’s yard — poor, vanquished Cyril, slighter, though 
older, than himself, with his little shirt torn and blood- 
stained — and heard t*he applause of his comrades gathered 
to watch the fray. 

“Well, I minds ’n, a little lad, chivying Granfer’s 
wuld sow round meadow,” struck in Stevens, who had 
now completed all his duties in the church and locked 
the door, the great key of which he carried in his hand. 

“A vine, peart buoy as ever I zee,” reflected Granfer, 
“ and wanted zo much stick as any on ’em. I’ve a smacked 
’un mezelf,” added Granfer, with great dignity and im- 
portance; “ay, and I smacked ’un well, I did!” repeated 
Granfer, with relish. 

“You was allays a good ’un to smack, Granfer,” ob- 
served his grandson, the clerk, with tender reminiscences 
of Granfer’s operation on his own person. 

“Whatever I done, I went through wi’ ’t,” returned 
the old man, complacently digesting this tribute to his 
prowess. “ Ay, I’ve a smacked ’un mezelf, and I smacked 
’un well, I did,” he repeated, with ever-growing import- 
ance. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


93 


“Come along home! ” said Stevens, who was waiting to 
lock the lich-gate. “ You bain't old enough to bide in 
churchyard for good, Granfer.” 

“Ah! I bain't a-gwine underground this ten year yet,” 
returned Granfer, shaking his head, and slowly rising 
from his tombstone in the blue moonlight, his breath 
showing smoke-like on the keen air, and his wrinkled 
hands numbed doubly by age and the winter night. “ I 
bain't a-gwine yet,” he muttered to himself; while the 
group broke up in slow, rustic fashion, and they all 
trudged off, Tom leading the way, erect and martial, 
airily swinging his little cane, and stepping with a firm, 
even stride; Jim rolling along with a wide, swaying gait, 
as if there were an earthquake, and the churchyard 
ground were heaving and surging around him; the rustics 
trampling heavily after, with a stolid, forceful step, as if 
the ground beneath them were a stubborn enemy, to be 
mastered only by continued blows; and soon the gray 
church stood silent and deserted in the frosty moonlight, 
till the clock in the belfry pealed out five mellow strokes 
above the quiet, unheeding dead. 

At that hour Ben Lee was on the point of leaving his 
stables and going home to tea. Judkins and he were 
kindling their pipes at the harness-room fire, each with a 
face of sullen gloom. 

“ It wasn't so much what he said,” observed Judkins ; 
“ ’twas how he said it made them all cry. He seemed 
kind of heartbroken about it, as though somebody be- 
longing to him, some friend like, had done wrong. 

“ Do you think he was thinking of my poor girl ? ” 
asked Ben, quickly ; and Judkins nodded assent. 

“ He always had a kind heart, had Mr. Cyril, and he 
thought a deal of Alma,” continued Lee ; “ lent her good 
books and that.” 

“ There was one in the church as wasn't upset, and 
looked as quiet as a whetstone all through — that damned 
doctor ! ” said the young man, fiercely. 

“ Doctor Everard ? You don't think, Charles — " 

“Haven't I seen him walking in the wood with her ?” 
he interrupted, with imprecations. “ Why did he come 
sneaking into your house, doctoring you? wife last spring, 
day after day without fail, and always somethink to say 
to Alma afterward in another room ? Answer me that, 
Ben Lee ! ” 


94 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


The man was half stunned. “I’d break every bone in 
his cursed body,” he burst out, purple with passion, “ if I 
thought that ! And the good he done my wife, too, and 
I that blind ! ” 

“Blind you were, Ben Lee, and blind was everybody 
else. But I watched. Fve seen them shake hands at the 
gate, and she giving of him flowers, damn him ! Fve 
seen them in the wood there, standing together, and he 
showing of her things through that glass of his that 
makes things bigger than they ought to be. Wait till I 
catch him, Ben, thaFs all ! And he sitting through that 
sermon, and everybody crying, and even Mr. Ingram 
blowing his nose ; he sitting as scornful and cold as any 
devil. There’s no conscience in the likes of him ! ” 

“ Charles,” cried Ben, suddenly clutching the young 
man’s arm with a grip that brought the blood to his face, 
“I’ll kill him!” 

Ben was purple, and quivering from head to foot, and 
Judkins’s passionate anger sank within him at the sight. 

“Hush, Ben, hush!” he said; “don’t you do nothing 
rash. Killing’s murder, Ben. And that will do her no 
good. No, no; I’ll thrash him, and you shall thrash him. 
and he shall be brought to book, sure enough; that’s 
only justice.” 

Poor Ben dashed away his pipe, covered his face with 
his coat-cuff, and broke out crying. 

“ Lord ha’ mercy! cried the young groom, crying 
himself. “You do take on, Ben. Come, come, cheer 
up, man. Better days’ll come, and you may see her mar- 
ried and happy yet. Come on home, Ben, come.” 

And he drew him out into the solemn quiet of the win- 
ter moonlight, and took him across the park and the 
meadow, and wished him good-night at the door of his 
sorrowful home. “And mind you, Ben, don’t you be 
hard on her,” he said at parting. 

“If Ben comes across him,” he muttered to himself, as 
he strolled moodily up and down the high-road, whence 
he could see the Temple white in the moonlight, with its 
one window faintly aglow, “ he’ll do for him. Ben’s hot, 
and he’ll do for him, as sure as eggs is eggs.” Then he 
vowed to himself that he would wreak his own revenge 
first, and, if possible, save Ben from yielding to his own 
passionate nature. “ 1 11 track him down like a hound! ” 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


95 


he muttered, striking fiercely at the frosted hedgerow 
with the light whip he carried. 

Everard, in the mean time, was serenely happy in the 
drawing-room at Malbourne, unconscious that he had an 
enemy in the world, much less that men were scheming 
against his honor and his life. Nay, he did not even 
dream that he had so much as a detractor; he loved his 
fellows, and was at peace with mankind. 

The family were gathered in the drawing-room in 
pleasant Sunday idleness, save Mr. Maitland, who was 
visiting a sick parishiner. Cyril and Marion were side by 
side on a remote sofa, dreamily happy in each other’s 
presence; Henry had mounted his microscope within 
reach of Mrs. Maitland, and was displaying its wonders in 
calm happiness for her and Lilian. Mark Antony, after 
careful and minute inspection of every detail of the 
strange apparatus, had decided that it was harmless, 
though frivolous, and expressed this decision by deep 
contented purrs and an adjournment to Cyril’s knee, 
where he saw a prospect of long continuation and peace; 
and Lennie and Winnie occupied the hearth-rug, and 
divided their attention between the dogs and the micro- 
scope. 

When Lilian bent over the tube, with the strong light 
of the lamp touching her animated face, and her dress 
rustling against him, Henry thought he had never been 
so happy in his life. Now and again some little unex- 
pected incident, some glance or tone, revealed to him the 
delicious truth that they loved each other. No one else 
suspected that any change had come over the fraternal 
relations of a life-time; they possessed this young happi- 
ness as a secret, sacred treasure, and feared the moment 
when it must be revealed to the world. Everard was 
loath to part even with the sweet anguish of doubt which 
crossed his heaven from time to time; it was so delightful 
to watch and question every word and glance and gesture 
of Lilian’s, and play upon them a perpetual daisy game 
— f<r she loves me, she loves me not, she loves me.” Some 
deep instinct told him that never in all his life would he 
again taste such happiness as this .'blessed dawn of love 
yielded him. As for Lilian, her manner took a little shy- 
ness occasionally in the strange fear which is the shadow 
of unspeakable joy. 


96 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


Soon the domestic quiet was broken, but not troubled, 
by the irruption of Stanley and Lyster Garrett, the twG 
sons of Northover, who liked to lounge away a Sunday 
evening at the Rectory, and there was much discussion oi 
the entertainment to be given the next night to the vil- 
lagers; and then the girl Garretts were brought across 
the park to assist in the little parliament, and kept to 
share the informal sujjper which was a Sunday feature at 
Malbourne. 

During supper a note arrived from Swaynestone, bid- 
ding Everard come to luncheon next day to meet the 
great Professor Hamlyn, who had seen some paper of 
Everard’s in a scientific journal, and expressed a wish to 
see the writer. This was a great pleasure to Everard, 
and a little responsive light in Lilian’s face told him that 
she realized what making this man’s acquaintance meant 
to him. 

“The luncheon was a great success,” Everard observed, 
on his return to the Rectory in the afternoon next day. 
“The great man was most gracious; he did me the honor 
of contradicting me nine times. Sir Lionel, in his gentle 
way, was a little horrified at his lion’s roar, but saw that 
I was specially honored in being selected for the royal 
beast’s refection. 

He went on to tell how the great writer, who lived in 
the neighborhood, and was entertaining the professor, 
had been present, and had been less overbearing in man- 
ner and milder in language than usual. His hair had, 
however, evidently not been brushed. He was question- 
ing Sir Lionel about Cyril’s sermon, in which he was 
interested, since he had a slight acquaintance with the 
Maitlands, and had already detected Cyril’s bright parts. 
He heard of the sermon through his brother, who had 
been taking a country stroll the previous afternoon, and 
had sauntered unnoticed into the church, just at the 
beginning of the sermon, and returned home with the 
intelligence that a young genius had arisen in the neigh- 
borhood, with a voice, manner, and power unequalled" in 
his experience. 

Ingram Swaynestone, who had accompanied Everard 
back to Malbourne, wondered that Cyril should stare 
abstractedly at the fire during this recital, as if it had no 
interest for him, and made some remark to him expressive 
of his own personal appreciation of the sermon. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


9 ? 


“My good fellow,” returned Cyril, facing about, and 
speaking in his easy genial fashion, “ do you suppose 
that I don't know that I have the ‘ gift of the gab,' as 
Everard calls it ? I don't know that one need be proud 
of it, any more than of having one's nose placed in the 
middle of one's face, instead of all askew, as befalls some 
people ; and yet the devil is quite active enough in 
persuading me to be vain of it without my friends’ 
assistance.'' 

“ It strikes me, Cyril,'' broke in Everard, “ that you 
and the devil are on very confidential terms. » I should 
have thought an innocent young parson like you the very 
last person the arch-enemy would select to hob-and-nob 
with.'' 

“ As if the premier were to hold confidential chats with 
the late Nana Sahib,” added Ingram, laughing. 

Cyril flushed hotly, and then said, with a quietly 
dignified air, of which he was master when he wished to 
rebuke gently, “You are light-hearted, Henry; your 
spirits run away with you.” 

Upon which Everard could not resist retorting, with 
unabashed gravity, “ I trust that yours will not run away 
with you, Cyril, since they are of such a questionable 
complexion.” 

“ Come, you idle people,” broke in Lilian; “ it is time 
to go to the school-room. Are you going to be a waiter, 
Ingram? There is no compulsion, remember. Henry 
and the two Garretts are enlisted. Keppel Everard is 
our Ganymede ; Marion and I are Hebes. In plain Eng- 
lish, we serve the tea, and Keppel the beer.” 

“ Since all the posts are filled, I will engage myself as 
general slavey,” said the good-tempered Ingram, rising 
and following Lilian to the school-rooms, where a sub- 
stantial meal was spread and Mr. Maitland with his cu- 
rate, Mr. Marvyn, was already receiving his humble guests, 
who, unlike the guests of more fashionable entertain- 
ments, liked to arrive before instead of after the appointed 
hour, and in this case came long before all the candles were 
lighted, so that they depended chiefly on fire-light for 
illumination. 

Soon, however, the tables were full, men, women, and 
children sitting before a bounteous supply of roast beef 
and potatoes; while the air became oppressive with the 

I 


98 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


scent of crushed evergreens and steaming food. Mr. 
Maitland and his curate had one table; Cyril and the 
Rev. George Everard presided at another; and the chil- 
dren's special hoard rejoiced inLennie and Winnie as host 
and hostess. 

Profound gravity prevailed, broken only by an occa- 
sional feminine titter or childish laugh, though it was 
evident, from the expression of Granfer's face when he 
came to the end of his first plate of beef, that he contem- 
plated making a remark, probably of a jocular nature. 
All the mirth of the feast seemed to be concentrated in 
the faces of the Hebes and Ganymedes, who flew about 
the room with the greatest enjoyment, and took care that 
neither plate nor cup was empty. The two most assidu- 
ous waiters were Ingram Swaynestone and Everard, both 
of whom appeared to have the gift of ubiquity, and carved 
with a recklessness and rapidity that astonished all be- 
holders. It was not until the pudding was finished, and 
grace had been sung by the choir, that some symptoms 
of mirth and enjoyment began to break out among the 
rustic revellers, and Mr. Maitland laughed with his usual 
heartiness at Granfer's annual joke, a fine antique one, 
with the mellowness of fifty years upon it. 

It was pleasant, while the tables were being cleared, 
and the people were grouped about the room, to see Cyril 
move among his old friends, saying to each exactly the 
right thing, in the manner exactly fitted to charm each; 
going up to Tom Hale, and laying his hand affectionately 
on his stalwart, red-coated shoulder, and calling the 
pleased flush into his face by the manner in which he 
alluded to old times, especially the immortal battle. 

“ I should be sorry to fight you now, Tom," he added; 
“or Jim either. It is well that my calling makes me a 
man of peace, while yours make you men of war." 

“ Yes, Mr. Cyril, it is all very well to be strong," 
replied Tom; “but what's that to a head-piece like 
yours ? " 

“They would rather have a smile from Cyril than a 
whole dinner from the rest of us," Everard observed to 
Lilian, as he paused a moment in his toilsome occupation 
of re-arranging the room. “Just look at George," he 
added, pointing to his reverend brother, who was stand- 
ing disconsolate and dejected in the quietest corner he 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


99 


could find; “he is afraid that people are enjoying them- 
selves. He would give his head to be allowed to improve 
the occasion." 

“He implored my father to substitute hymns and cler- 
ical addresses for our frivolous little entertainment," 
replied Lilian. “He asked him how he would answer for 
having let slip such a precious opportunity of preaching 
the Gospel." 

“ Such a gospel — 

“ * The dismal news I tell, 

How our friends are all embarking 
For the fiery port of hell.’ 

Poor old George! What a dreary phantasmagoria life 
must seem to him!" 

“Happily, he doesn’t really believe his creed. He 
asked Granfer just now if he knew that he was standing 
on the brink of the grave. Granfer replied, ‘ Ay, I’ve 
ben a-standing there this ninety year and more, and I 
bain’t, zo to zay, tired on’t yet.’" 

Everard went up to his brother and accosted him. “ I 
hope there is nothing wrong, George," he said; “you 
look as if something had disagreed with you." 

“ Thank you, Henry," he replied, “ my health is, under 
Providence, excellent ; but I grieve for the soills of these 
poor creatures. I have ascertained for a fact that Mait- 
land has caused beer and tobacco to be placed in a class- 
room for the men. Why, oh, why will he not lead them 
to the only true source of comfort ? " 

The diners were now joined by other guests of a higher 
grade ; Farmer Long and his family ; other farmers ; a 
fresh contingent of Garretts ; and last, though not by any 
means least, Sir Lionel Swaynestone and his two pretty 
daughters. 

Thereupon the choir, assisted by amateurs, struck up, 
“ My love is like a red, red rose," and the concert began. 

*Wax executed a solo on the clarionet of such fearful 
difficulty that Everard trembled lest he should break a 
blood-vessel ; and everybody, including Mrs. Wax, who 
coursed frantically after his rapid runs and flourishes on 
the piano, breathed an inward thanksgiving when he had 
finished. A piano duet between Miss Swaynestone and 
Miss Garrett followed, and was not the less tumultuously 

Lot C, 


100 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


applauded because the superior swiftness of Miss Garrett’s 
fingers landed her at the finish two bars ahead of Miss 
Swaynestone, who played on to the end with unruffled 
composure. Nobody had taken the slightest notice of 
any of these performances, save Wax’s, which alarmed 
the nervous ; but now a change took place. Cyril led 
Lilian on to the platform, and Marion’s piano prelude was 
drowned by the sound of heavy feet plunging in from the 
smoking-room, and everybody listened attentively for 
what was a really delicate entertainment for the ear— -a 
vocal duet between the twins. Even Sir Lionel left his 
stately calm to encore the simple melody, while Granfer 
did serious damage to the school floor with his stick. It 
was not that the brother and sister sang with unusual 
skill, or that their voices were remarkably good, taken 
apart ; the charm lay in the peculiar sweetness of tone 
resulting from the exact blending of the two. 

Ingram Swaynestone grumbled in a good-tempered way 
at having to read after this performance, and though he 
read a bit of Dickens with great spirit and humor, Ever- 
ard observed that the audience only listened and 
applauded as a matter of duty. Ethel Swaynestone was 
an accomplished singer, but her voice failed to please the 
rustic ear; while the choir glees and other amateur music 
were received as a matter of course. But when Cyril 
once more stood on the platform, and began in his rich, 
pure voice, “ There was a sound of revelry by night,” 
Everard was startled at the sudden hush of attention that 
fell on the audience, and surprised at the richness of har- 
mony in the well-known stanzas. When Cyril repeated the 
line, “ But hush! hark ! a deep sound strikes like a rising 
knell! ” the rustics started and looked over their should- 
ers in dismay, and one susceptible matron uttered a faint 
shriek. “ Did ye not hear it?” continued the reciter, in 
such thrilling tones that Mrs. Stevens, meeting the light 
of Cyril’s blue eyes, took the question personally, and re- 
plied wildly in the negative, to the general consternation. 
Having brought this to a conclusion in such a manner 
that his unlettered audience actually saw the ball-room 
scene, “ the cheeks all pale,” the “ trembling of distress,” 
and actually heard the sounds of approaching doom break 
in upon the brilliant revelry, and witnessed the hurried 
departure of the troops to the terrible field destined to be 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


101 


fertilized with, “red rain,” Cyril paused, to let the 
tumultuous encores subside ; and, at last, when silence 
ensued, began with a plaintive sweetness, that was in 
strong contrast to the dramatic force and fire of the “Eve 
of Waterloo ”■ — 


“ * I remember, I remember, 

The house where I was born, 

The little window where the sun 
Came peeping in at morn. 

He never came a wink too soon, 

Or brought too long a day ; 

But now — ’ ” 

Here Cyril paused, with a deep sigh. 

“ * — I often wish the night 
Had borne my breath away.’ ” 

To Everard’s intense surprise, he not only saw tears all 
round him, but found a sensation of intense sorrow and 
longing for the past stealing over himself, while the 
pathos of CyriTs voice seemed to break his heart. He 
saw, as they all saw, Malbourne Rectory, and Cyril, a 
boy once more — gentle, happy, and full of sweet, inno- 
cent fancies; and when the latter went on, in his quiet 
voice, so full of melodious heartbreak — 

“ ‘ And where my brother set 
The laburnum on his birthday: 

That tree is living yet,’ ” 

something rushed up into Everard’s throat and half 
choked him. He knew that Cyril was thinking of a rose- 
tree he had planted on a far-off birthday. 

“ ‘ But now ’tis little joy,’ ” 

said Cyril, with a voice full of tears — 

*“ To know I’m farther off from heaven 
Than when I was a boy.’ ” 

There was no applause to this; complete and tearful 
silence reigned when he finished and stepped quietly 
down among his friends, where Sir Lionel gently rebuked 
him for playing so cruelly on their feelings, and added, 
“ As I said to Ingram yesterday, such a voice and manner 


102 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


would sway the House; ” and every one was relieved 
when the choir struck up, “ All among the Barley.” 

Lilian was among the few who did not give way to 
tears during the recital of Hood's pathetic little poem, 
though Everard, who hovered near her all the evening, 
observed that her large, soft gray eyes were dewy wet, as 
was their wont when she was moved, and her face reflected 
all the changes on her brother's. It was not easy to get 
very close to Lilian, because she was fenced in, as it were, 
by a little ring of children, who clung to her skirts, and 
laid their cheeks against her beautiful, slender hands, 
and were perfectly happy with the privilege of touching 
her. 

“I do not think,” she said, while returning to the 
Rectory through the frosty moonlight with Everard 
“ that Cyril is farther off from heaven than when he was 
a boy. Indeed, it seems to me that one must grow 
nearer to it with every day of life, unless one deliberately 
turns from it.” 

“You are speaking from your own experience,” replied 
Henry. “ Men are different. To go through early man- 
hood is to be drawn over a morass of temptation, into 
which, with the best intentions, most men sink occasion- 
ally.” 

“Hot men like Cyril, Henry. He is so slightly 
weighted with flesh that he would skim dry-footed over 
the most quaking quagmire. I know every thought in 
Cyril's heart.” 

Everard was half inclined to indorse this opinion of 
Cyril. He recognized in his friend's character a 
certain feminine element, that ewig tveibliche which 
Goethe pronounces the saving ingredient in human 
nature. The protecting tenderness with which he loved 
the bright, gentle boy, two years his junior and less 
robust than himself, still lived in his deep affection for 
the pious and intellectual young priest. Cyril’s feelings 
were sacred to him as a woman's; he feared to sully their 
delicate bloom by harsh illusions to the bare facts of life. 
He was one of the twins, both of whom were objects of 
his life-long tenderness. And Cyril had his moods, like 
a woman — a peculiarity not without fascination for Ever- 
ard's more thoroughly masculine mind. 

A soft mood was on Cyril that night. He knocked at 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


103 


Everard "s door after every one had retired for the night 
and drew a chair to his side by the fire, before which the 
doctor was smoking, and, investing himself in one of 
Everard's coats, lighted a pipe of his own. 

“ The coolness with which the fellow takes my coats! ” 
growled Everard. 

“ It is no matter if your coats smell of tobacco,” replied 
Cyril, tranquilly; “ I smoke so seldom that I have no 
smoking-coats. To-night I am restless.” 

“ Why so pale and wan, fond lover?” laughed Everard. 
“Because Marion is gone back to Woodland for two 
days, I suppose.” 

“You may laugh, Henry, but I feel more than lost 
without her. I am helpless, separated from the best 
influence of my life.” 

“ You are a slave to your feelings ; learn to master 
them.” 

“It is true,” replied Cyril. “You are the best and 
wisest friend ever man had. I never regretted doing any- 
thing you advised. I shall always be grateful to you for 
making me read up for mathematical honors. I needed 
that discipline to steady me. I have never valued you as 
you deserve ; only now and again it flashes upon me that 
what I take for granted is of superior worth. How 
selfish I was about letting Marion join you in the Mediter- 
ranean ! You little dream how I suffered for that. Well, 
without you, Marion and I would have been parted for- 
ever. ” 

“ Without Lilian.” 

“You and Lilian together. How selfish and weak 1 
was ! and the harm that came from it ! ” 

“ Oh, come ! It's all right now ; a forgotten story.” 

“ There are things that can never be forgotten,” sighed 
Cyril, with the pathetic intonation that had broken 
people's hearts in the evening. “ To give way to a sin, 
only one sin, is like letting a little water through a dike. 
A child may begin it, but, once begun, the terrible 
consequences sweep endlessly on, a very flood of iniquity. 
I suppose there is nothing which has the power of multi- 
plying itself like sin. One hideous consequence begets 
a hundred more hideous,” continued Cyril, staring 
moodily at the fire, while his pipe lay extinct and 
neglected by his side. 


104 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


“ I see no pulpit, your reverence,” said Everard, who 
was puffing away with quiet enjoyment. 

Cyril turned with one of his sudden changes, and 
flashed a mirthful glance of his strange blue eyes on his 
friend, and, replenishing his pipe from the tobacco 
which Keppel had brought for Everard on his return 
from his last voyage, broke into a strain of gay affection- 
ate chat, full of a thousand reminiscences of the school- 
days they passed together under Mr. Marvyn's care in the 
quiet village. 

“What a fellow you were!” exclaimed Cyril, with 
enthusiasm, after recalling a certain story of a Sevres 
vase; and, though Everard only grunted, he looked at 
the graceful, animated figure before him with an affec- 
tionate adoration that made him feel it would be a 
pleasure to die for such a man. “ I was afraid when I 
smashed the vase,” continued Cyril, “ and but for you 
should have hidden it. I never shall forget seeing you 
walk up to Lady Swaynestone and tell her that we had 
run up against the vase and broken it. I felt such a 
sneak; I had done it, and you took the blame on your- 
self, and got the punishment. She said no word, but 
delivered you such a box on the ear as made mine tingle, 
and sent you staggering across the room. Then her 
anger found words, and you bore it all.” 

“ I never knew a ruder or more ill-bred woman,” said 
Everard. 

“I suppose you got over the box on the ear in an hour 
or two,” continued Cyril; “but I ‘did not. I was mis- 
erable for days, hating myself, and yet too frightened to 
tell the truth.” 

Everard here produced a yawn of cavernous intensity, 
and dropped his pipe in sheer drowsiness; but Maitland 
seemed more alert than ever, and rose in his restlessness 
and looked out of the window on the dark vault of shim- 
mering stars. 

“The night wanes,” he said; “one day more, and the 
weary old year will be done — only one day.” 

“Ungrateful fellow!” said Everard, stretching himself 
till he seemed gigantic; “ such a good old year. I shall 
be sorry to say good-bye to him, for my part.” 

Cyril dropped the curtain and turned to the fire, his 
features all alight. “Let us look forward,” he said, “to 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


105 


the rosy future. Welcome to sixty-three, Harry; it is full 
of promise for us both! Good-night, dear lad, and God 
bless you! ” 

And, with a warm hand-clasp, he took his leave, but 
turned again, lingering, irresolute ; and then, with 
another warm hand-clasp and blessing, left his drowsy 
friend to his slumbers, just as the church clock was 
striking three. 


CHAPTER IX. 

The last day of the year dawned bright and cloudless, a 
very prince and pearl of winter days, and Everard’s heart 
bounded within him as he looked out on the ruddy morn- 
ing, and felt it a joy merely to live. 

“I shall long remember sixty-two,” he thought; “it 
has been a good year, and to-day will crown and complete 
the whole. To-day I will make sure of my fate.” 

The wine of life never before had the sparkle and effer- 
vescence of that morning ; it was almost too much for a 
sober mind. Had Everard been superstitious, or even 
introspective, he would have presaged disaster at hand. 
Instead of which, he rejoiced in his youth, and felt as if 
his body were turned to air, as he sprang down the stair- 
case and into the sunny breakfast-room. 

Mr. Maitland was late that morning, and Cyril read the 
simple household prayers. Everard loved this sweet cus- 
tom of family prayer, remiss as he often was in assisting 
personally at it; it seemed so fit and harmonious for that 
holy incense to ascend from the altar of the innocent 
country home, and to-day it acquired a sort of pathos 
from the youth and grace of the reader. The scene lived 
long in his mind, irradiated by a sweet light of peace and 
holiness; the kneeling children and Lilian, the sunshine 
touching their hair; the bowed heads of the maids; the 
dignified bearing of the reader; the music of his voice — a 
voice soft now, and soothing as the murmur of the brook 
beneath the trees, with none of the tragic tones they 
knew so well. Just as Cyril was about to pronounce the 
closing benediction, Mr. Maitland, thinking the prayers 
done, entered, and seeing how they were employed. 


106 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


dropped on his knees in time to receive the lad’s blessing. 
The sight of that gray head, bent thus before the young 
priest's benison, touched Everard profoundly, and he felt 
humbled to think of his own world-stained soul by the 
side of these spotless creatures — priests and women and 
children. 

“ Lead us not into temptation,” said Cyril’s pure rich 
voice, chorused by the innocent trebles and Everard's 
own faltering bass. 

What temptation could possibly befall those guileless 
beings that day? What harsh dissonance could ever mar 
the music of those tuneful lives? he wondered. And he 
was glad that his own faltering petition had gone up to 
Heaven with those of hearts so pure, though even he 
could scarcely fall into temptation in that sweet spot, he 
thought. 

Cyril announced his intention of walking into Oldport 
that bright morning, and Lilian, of course, was to go 
part of the way with him. Everard had been asked to 
shoot over some of the Swaynestone covers and rather 
surprised Cyril, who knew that his friend liked sport, by 
saying that he had declined the shooting-party, and 
wanted to join the pedestrians. 

“ You had far better shoot, Henry,” he said; “a mere 
walk is a stupid thing for you. You have had no amuse- 
ment whatever since you have been here.” 

“ To-morrow we plunge into a vortex of dissipation,” 
said Everard. “ Will you give me the first dance, Lilian? 
By the way, I suppose his reverence has given up these 
frivolities. 

“ Oh, I shall dance at Woodlands to-morrow,” replied 
Cyril. “ Just two square dances with Marion, and then, 
I suppose, farewell to such delights.” 

“ I cannot say that I like to see a clergyman dancing,” 
observed his father, “ though I danced myself till I was 
forty, and should enjoy a turn with the young people 
even now.” 

“ Then, let us have a quiet carpet-dance while the 
boys are here,” said Lilian; just the Swaynestones and 
Garretts and Marion, and father shall dance with each of 
us in turn. 

“ Oh, yes ! ” cried Everard ; and Cyril chimed in with 
great animation. “Just one more fling forme;” and 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


107 


Mr. Maitland went off laughing, and saying he had noth- 
ing to do with it — they must ask their mother, and Len- 
nie and Winnie jumped for joy, and announced that they 
should not go to bed before their elders, and the little fete 
was regarded as a pleasant certainty. 

Cyril kept them waiting some minutes after the ap- 
pointed time for starting. He had important letters to 
write, he said ; and when at last he appeared, his face 
was full of care and perplexity. In the mean time, Lilian 
and Hverard were very happy on the sunny lawn together, 
visiting the invalid donkey and other animals, and wan 
dering about their old play-ground, past the spot where 
the twins used to play at Robinson Crusoe, and where 
Everard helped them build a hut, and recalling a thou- 
sand pleasant memories of their childish labors and sports. 
There was hoar-frost on the delicate branches of the leaf- 
less trees, and the sunshine was broken into a thousand 
jewel-like radiances by the little sharp facets of the ice- 
crystals. There was an unwanted sparkle also in Lilianas 
eyes, and a deeper glow on her cheeks than usual. The 
air was like wine. 

The blacksmith was clinking merrily at his glowing 
forge as they passed along the road, and his blithe music 
carried far in the still air. Granfer was sunning himself 
outside, according to custom, ready for a chat with any- 
body, and commanding from his position a view of all 
the approaches to the village. Hale, the wheelwright, 
was there, getting some ironwork done, and turned with 
G-ranfer to look after the trio. 

“ Ay,” observed the latter, shaking his head wisely, 
“ a viner pair than they twins o’ ourn you never see, 
John Hale, so well matched they be as Sir Lionel's bays.” 

“A pretty pair,” replied the wheelwright; “but give 
me the doctor. There’s muscle and build! ” 

“ Ay,” echoed Straun, between the rhythmic hammer- 
strokes; “a man like he’s a credit to his vittles.” 

The young doctor’s appearance certainly justified this 
observation, and his walk and bearing fully set off the 
robust manliness of his athletic frame, which was furthei 
enhanced by contrast with Cyril’s slender grace. The 
friends were of similar height, but Henry’s shoulders 
were higher, and made him look taller; his chest and 
back were far broader than Cyril’s, and his well-balanced 


108 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


limbs were hard with muscle. The suit of gray which he 
wore gave him breadth, and displayed his form more fully 
than did Cyril's black broadcloth of severe clerical cut, 
which had moreover the well-known effect of lessening 
the outlines of the figure. The delicate glow which the 
sparkling air had called into Cyril's worn cheek was very 
different from the firm hue of health in Henry’s honest 
face; and the fearless, frank gaze of his bright brown 
eyes, and the light brown mustache, looking golden in 
the sunshine, gave him an older look than Cyril's clean- 
shaven features wore. 

Hale observed to Granfer that whoever attacked the 
doctor on a dark night would find him an ugly custo- 
mer, which Grandfer admitted, adding that Cyril's 
strength all went to brain-power, in which he was 
supreme. Lilian also observed Henry's athletic appear- 
ance in contrast with her brother's slight build, and then 
she remembered how the friends but the day before had 
been playing with the children in the hall, and the fragile- 
looking Cyril had given his muscular friend a blow so 
clean and straight and well-planted that the doctor had 
gone down like a ninepin before it, to the great amuse- 
ment of the children and satisfaction of Everard. 

Farmer Long was driving into Oldport in his gig, and 
there beside him sat Mr. Marvyn, charmed to see his 
three pupils together. “ I shall not see you again 
Henry," he said, regretfully, “unless you stay over Sun- 
day. I only came back for the entertainment yesterday. 
I have a parson's week to finish. Cyril I shall see 
again." And so they parted with regret, since Everard 
was greatly attached to his old tutor, who had encour- 
aged and developed his taste for natural science, and 
upheld him in his choice of a profession. 

“ And I wanted to tell old Marvyn about my germ 
theory," Everard said, as the gig disappeared. 

“ You will be able to tell the whole world soon," 
replied Lilian, to whom the theory had been confided and 
explained that very morning. 

“Not yet," said Everard; “it takes years of patient 
study and experiment to verify a scientific theory." 

“ Old Hal always was a patient fellow," Cyril observed. 
“ Do you remember the rows about his dissections in his 
bedroom, Lill?" 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 109 

Lilian replied that she remembered the odors, and they 
all laughed over the old school-room jokes and catastro- 
phes, and were very happy as they climbed the hillside 
by a field-path, leaving the road below them. Afterward 
Everard remembered the rare and affectionate expression, 
“ Old Hal.” And now in the bright sunshine he was 
pleased to see Cyril so like his old self, careless, cordial, 
and light-hearted, all the asceticism and sadness put 
away; ambition, toil, and care completely forgotten. He 
knew that Cyril loved Marion truly, and would be happy 
with her, and yet it struck him that morning that his 
strong, half-instinctive affection for his twin sister 
touched a yet deeper chord in his nature. How that 
Marion was away, there was a greater ease about the 
twins; each seemed to develop the other’s thoughts in 
some mysterious manner. They laughed to each other, 
and walked hand-in-hand like children, seeing everything 
through each other's eyes — the still, sunny winter fields 
and brown woods stretching .away to the sea, the flocks of 
weird white sea-gulls, the occasional rabbit or pheasant 
starting up before them, the larks, silent now, fluttering 
over the grassy furrows, the bright berries in copse and 
hedgerow, the sheep peacefully munching the mangolds a 
solitary shepherd was cutting for them in a lonely field. 
They called each other Cyll and Lill, abbreviations none 
else ever used; they contradicted each other as they 
never dreamed of contradicting anybody else. 

Everard walked along, sometimes by their side, some- 
times behind them, as the nature of the path obliged, 
and listened to them and loved them. The twins were 
never so delicious to him as when together in his familiar 
presence, of which they seemed to make no account. So 
long as those two could meet together thus, an immortal 
childoood would be theirs, he thought; age could never 
rob the beautiful bond between them of its bloom. 
Presently they quarrelled. Lilian sat on a felled tree in 
the woods through which they were passing; Cyril leaned 
up against a tree; and Everard looked on with amuse- 
ment, and loved them all the more in their childishness. 

“ Oh, you babes in the wood! ” he cried at last; where- 
upon Cyril flashed upon him one of his droll glances, and 
laughed. 

“ Come, Lill,” he said, “I forgive you this time.” 


110 


THE SILENCE OF LEAN MAITLAND. 


Absolute harmony and utter unconsciousness of past 
anger was established between them on the instant, and 
Everard was amused to hear them plunge straightway 
into a grave discussion upon the limits of free-will. 

They were now high on the crest of the hill, and could 
see the lovely stretches of down sweeping away to the 
unseen sea on one side, while on the other the Swayne- 
stone lands sloped down with wood and park and farm- 
stead till they merged in the horizon, which was broken 
here and there by tiny blue bays of inland sea on the 
north. 

There was no sound; all the song-birds, even the robin, 
were hushed by the frost, and the whole landscape lay 
silent before them, folded in the awful purity of winter 
sunshine. The shadows in the hills and woods were blue, 
and distant objects looked immensely far in the violet 
haze of the winter morning. Here they paused, deep in 
their argument, and looked down over the tranquil woods 
and saw the white front of Swaynestone House gleaming 
in the sun. 

Down in a low-lying fallow field there were some black 
specks motionless in the furrows; suddenly they rose in a 
black cloud of wings, and there were a hundred silver 
flashes against the belt of coppice bordering the field. 
Higher still the cloud rose, and swift gleams of 'black and 
silver flashed in rhythmic sequence against the pure blue 
of the sky, and the weird wail of the plover was heard 
faintly, as the flock floated in a dazzle of white bodies and 
black wings over the coppice till they reached another 
field, into the furrows of which they dropped motionless. 
While Everard and Lilian were watching the plovers, they 
did not observe that Cyril plunged into the wood behind 
them and put his hand into the hollow of a tree. 

“ I was looking for a squirrel's nest," he said, strolling 
back again. “ Listen; I will imitate a chaffinch." 

It was a trick they used to practice when parted from 
each other in the woods, and they looked down over the 
roof of the Temple, which lay among the trees below 
them, and thought of their old rambles for nuts and 
blackberries, when little Alma would often join them and 
tell them where to find heavy-laden boughs and brambles. 
Suddenly from among the trees rose the call of another 
chaffinch, exactly corresponding to Cyril's. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


Ill 


“ Some children at play,” said Cyril, carelessly; 
“ Lennie and Winnie, perhaps. They were going to 
Swaynestone to slide. I must get on, Everard; I have a 
lot to do in Oldport.” 

“ ‘ Jog on, jog on, the footpath way, 

And merrily hent the stile-a : 

A merry heart goes all the day, 

Your sad tires in a mile-a/ ” 

Everard sang out in his deep voice, as the trio continued 
their walk at a mended pace. 

After another mile through hanging woods of beech 
and sycamore, they descended a hill and climbed another 
crested with coppice, through which they passed, brush- 
ing the heavy hoar-frost from the dead leaves and twigs 
as they went, and pausing for Lilian to show them the 
haunt of a little wren in a bank. The tiny bird, 
attracted by some crumbs sprinkled on her muff, came 
cautiously out, climbed up her arm, pecked its dainty 
meal, and suffered itself to be raised on the muff to the 
level of her face, in which it gazed confidingly, even ven- 
turing to peck at a little stray fluff of a curl which stole 
over her neck. Everard and Maitland stood apart and 
watched this pleasant comedy. 

“ You had the same power over animals as Lilian,” 
Everard observed to Ovril. “ What is its secret, I 
wonder?” 

“ There are three moral factors,” replied Cyril : “per- 
fect self-control, that warm and intelligent affection 
which we call sympathy, and innocence. Lilian is the 
most guileless human being on the face of this earth. 
There must also be some physical attraction, I suspect 
— some mesmeric or electric power, of which we know 
little.” 

“But surely you possess the three moral factors; how 
is it you have lost your power? Lilian was saying only 
last night that the good draw nearer heaven with increas- 
ing years, and you, whose life has not been merely stain- 
less/ but austere — ” 

“ Henry,” interrupted Cyril, in his most pathetic voice, 
“ I am a man ! ” 

Lilian had replaced her tiny friend at its house-door, 
and now joined the young men, who went on their way, 


XI 2 THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 

Everard struck and startled by the heart-broken accent 
Cyril laid on the word man , and wondering if the morbid 
tone he had of late detected in the young priest’s mind 
did not almost verge on insanity. 

At the end of the coppice through which they were 
passing was a stile standing on a steep bank, which led by 
rough steps down into the high-road, and here they 
parted, the twins once more falling into discord, each 
offering Henry as a companion to the other, and declining 
to selfishly appropriate him, until he laughingly sug- 
gested that he was no mere chattel, but a being endowed 
with will: also that his will decided to take the homeward 
path witn Lilian — a decision which evidently satisfied 
Cyril, who sprang down the steep bank, and turned, on 
reaching the road, to the stile — over which the other two 
leaned — with a laughing face, and lifted his hat in his 
own graceful manner. They gazed after the light, well- 
carried figure for a moment or two, little imagining how 
all the light died out of the bright young face when it 
turned from them, what a weight of trouble lined the 
clear brow and drew down the corners of the delicate 
mouth, and added ten years, at least, to his apparent age, 
and then they began to trace their steps through the 
wood. 

“ It is like old times/’ Lilian observed. “ Cyril and I 
are growing old and wise, Henry; we are seldom like that 
now. We seem to grow apart, which we must expect.” 

“ ‘ The old order changeth, giving place to new/ ” 
quoted Everard. “ The new may be better, but one does 
not like to part with the old/’ he added, falteringly, after 
a pause. 

“ The old — was good,” replied Lilian, rather absently; 
and the perfect self-command of which her brother had 
spoken suddenly deserted her, with the consciousness that 
the story of her life and love was approaching a crisis, 
and the two walked on in silence. 

Everard’s bright spirits seem to have flown onward 
in the wake of Cyril, his heart sank down like a thing of 
lead, and a dreadful vision of all his sins and shortcom- 
ings, his weaknesses and failings, rose ghastly and oppres- 
sive before him. Henry Everard appeared to him as the 
merest rag of a man — the most complete failure that 
<sver issued from the workshops of nature and educa- 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. H3 

tion. He stole a glance at Lilian, walking with her 
light step and airy carriage by his side; a sweet picture 
of stainless womanhood, her cheek flushed with purest 
rose by exercise, her eyes cast down contrary to their 
wont, her hair touched into golden tints by the sunlight, 
and the outline of her form traced clearly against a back- 
ground of frosted hazel boughs, and his spirit died within 
him. What had he to offer her? How could he ever 
dare? And yet — Lilian turned under the stress of his 
ardent gaze, and met his eyes for one swift moment; then 
her looks resumed their commerce with the mossy, frost- 
veined path, and a rich rush of crimson flooded her face. 

“Lilian,” began Henry, breathlessly, “we have been 
great friends all our lives.” 

“Yes,” replied Lilian, regaining her natural mental 
poise; “Cyril and I always appropriate each other’s 
goods.” 

“Supposing Cyril out of the question,” he added, 
hastily, “would you not care for — value my friendship? 
In short, am I not your own personal friend? Don’t you 
care a little for me for my own sake, Lilian?” 

“ Indeed I do, dear Henry,” she replied, a little trem- 
ulously. “ There is no friend for whom I — whom I 
value more highly. That is — yes, we are real friends. ” 

“ You were always dear to me, very dear — as dear as 
Marion herself,” continued Henry; but you have become 
the dearest of all since I scarcely know when — the very 
dearest human being on earth. Oh, Lilian, the truth is 
that 1 love you with all my heart! I have loved you long; 
I cannot tell when I began.” 

“ That is not the important question,” returned Lilian, 
with a little smile dawning about her lips and eyes. 
“ The question is, how long do you mean to go on? ” 

The same quaint, half-humorous, half-pathetic expres- 
sion which so often lighted Cyril’s pale blue eyes now 
gleamed from Lilian’s gray orbs, moistened with the 
sweet dew which so frequently enhanced their luster, 
and even in that passionate moment Henry observed this, 
and thought how closely his love and his friendship 
were bound together, and realized that Cyril was dearer 
than ever to him now that Lilian was his. 

The answer to Lilian’s playful earnest was the old 
immemorial assertion of lovers, repeated with endless 
8 


114 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


delightful iteration, long drawn out with Heaven knows 
how much unnecessary sweetness. The old unvarying 
song the birds sing every spring, with a fresh charm that 
never cloys, though the white-headed man heard it in his 
childhood, and in the days when he too swelled the 
many-voiced marriage hymn which ascends perpetually 
from the youth and strength of earth; the old eternal 
song which is yet the freshest sound that ever falls on the 
ear of youth, and fills it with a sweet bewildered surprise; 
the theme which changed Eden from a prison to a home; 
— this delicious melody was sung over again in the win- 
try woods that day, when all the birds were hushed by 
the frost, and the earth lay still in its winter trance. 

The singing of this pleasant duet took a long time, and 
the low midwinter sun passed its meridian and travelled 
some distance on its westward way, while they strolled 
slowly on with many pauses, slowly enough to chill blood 
not warmed by the current of vital flame which young 
Love sends through the veins, until they reached the spot 
above the Temple, where they watched the plovers’ flight 
in the morning. They paused there. 

At that moment a delicate music floated up from the 
valley, the well-known, cheery chiming of the wagon- 
bells. Nearer and nearer the golden harmony swelled, 
stronger and stronger the fairy peals waxed, as the team 
approached on its way along the high-road to Oldport, till 
the soft chimes came tumbling in the full power of their 
sweet turbulence upon the clear, still air. 

“ Those are our wedding-bells,” said Everard, as they 
passed on and let the melodious clashing die away behind 
them in the distance. “ It is a good omen.” 


CHAPTER X. 

The irony of fate will often have it so that when life 
gains its culminating point of happiness, it is but one 
degree from the darkest hour of overthrow ; just as the 
blossom has reached its sweetest bloom, the blighting 
frost comes, and all is over. When Everard and Lilian 
exchanged the promise whose sweetness was to live 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


115 


through so many dark and lonely years, they little 
dreamed that any peril was near them in the silent wood. 
They saw no crouching figure trembling behind the hazel 
bushes ; they did not guess that any eye, save those of the 
wild creatures of the wood witnessed their betrothal ; and 
they went on their way rejoicing, making plans for the 
happy future they were to spend side by side. 

When Ben Lee went home to dinner that day, the 
young groom, Judkins, accompanied him, as he often did 
now, finding a strange solace to his own grief in that of 
the troubled father, and pleased that the old man turned 
to him for consolation. He usually left Lee at the door, 
but on this occasion Mrs. Lee came out and beckoned 
him in. 

“ She's gone to meet him,” she said, excitedly. “ She 
made believe to go and gather a bit of brushwood in the 
garden, and she's off up the hill to the wood. He must 
have passed an hour ago, and there was the whistle of a 
chaffinch for signal. I heard her whistle back, the 
deceitful fagot, though she thought I was safe out of the 
way, and she’s been watching for an opportunity ever 
since. Straight up the hill she went, Lee not twenty 
minutes gone.” 

While Mrs. Lee was speaking, the two men had fol- 
lowed her through the house, and now stood in the back 
garden, whence they could see the whole slope of the hill 
with its woody crest traced clear against the blue midday 
sky. Beneath this crest the trees had been cleared in a 
straight, broad strip about the breadth of the little 
garden. 

“ Look here, Ben!” cried Judkins, seizing the arm of 
Lee, who was striding rapidly through the garden, and 
was about to ascend the treeless slope; “ don't you do 
nothing rash, now.” 

Lee's face was purple, and he shook the younger man 
off with a muttered oath, when the latter once more 
caught him by the arm, and pointed upward, with a 
cry. 

“I knew it; I always knew it. The damned scoun- 
drel!” 

“ Just within the shadow of the wood, which partly 
screened them, were two figures, the inner and less seen, 
that of a woman in dark winter clothing; the outer, that 


116 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


of a man in a suit of gray. The light hazel twigs 
impinged but slightly on the latter figure, so that its out- 
line was distinctly seen, and the face itself was even 
visible sideways for a moment. The female figure, on 
the contrary, with the face hidden in the other's arm, 
and its dark outlines less striking by their color, could 
only be guessed at. The vision lasted but a moment; the 
figures moved over the woodland path. The hazels were 
denser there, and the path turned into the wood, so that 
the pair were gradually hidden, and soon completely 
vanished from sight. 

“ I'm witness, mind,” Judkins muttered, while Lee 
groaned aloud. “ You and me saw him go through the 
village this morning in those gray clothes and that hat.” 

So saying, the young man turned and went rapidly 
back, avoiding the garden, and plunging into the shadow 
of the trees which bordered it on either side, while Lee 
toiled up the hill. He had not gone far before Alma 
appeared on the spot where the hazels grew thin, and 
issued from the wood. She started slightly when she saw 
her father, but soon regained her composure, and advanced 
toward him. 

“What were you doing in the wood?” he asked, 
harshly. 

“ I only went up for a little fresh air this fine day,” 
she replied, gently. 

“ Went up to Lear the birds sing, perhaps,” he contim 
ued, with savage sarcasm. 

“ There are no birds singing now,” said Alma, sadly. 
“ Even the robin is silent in the frost.” 

“ Ay, and the chaffinch. Who were you speaking to a 
minute ago ? ” 

“Nobody,” she replied, looking surprised. 

“ That's a damned lie, Alma ! ” 

“ I have spoken to no human being but you and mother 
this week past,” said Alma, m a tone of weary apathy. 

They had reached the garden now, and Alma w r ent in, 
scarcely hearing the imprecation that burst from her mad- 
dened father's lips. 

Lee remained behind her ; then reascended the hill and 
picked up a little scrap of paper he had seen Alma tear in 
halves and drop when she thought herself unobserved. 
He pieced it together, and read, written in a disguised. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


117 


backward-slanting hand, “ At dusk to-night. The old 
spot. Important.” 

“ Oh, Alma!” he cried; “my pretty Alma! my only 
child! ” Then he turned back, his brow darkening as he 
went, till the momentary tenderness was quite effaced, 
and he muttered fiercely beneath his breath, “ Fll kill 
him! Fll kill him!” 

It was late when the unconscious lovers reached home. 
The bell was ringing for luncheon, and Mark Antony 
was sitting on the doorstep, looking very cross at his 
mistress’s delay; for he was a cat of regular habits, and 
particularly disliked waiting for meals. He received 
Lilian rather distantly, accepted Henry’s caress with 
haughty disdain, and then boxed Snip’s ears for barking 
inopportunely. 

“Oh, I say, Henry!” cried Lennie, who was bounding 
into the dining-room with fresh-brushed hair and clean 
collar, “ ain’t you in a mess?” 

Henry had slipped on a damp bank by a stream, in try- 
ing to gather some ivy colored crimson and gold for 
Lilian, and a great brown and green stain showed strik- 
ingly on the knee of his gray suit. In two bounds he 
was in his room, and in three seconds out of the stained 
suit and into another, consisting of a black coat and 
lower garments of the same tone of gray as those dis- 
carded. The gray suit was folded neatly and placed on a 
chair; and he appeared at the table in less than five min- 
utes in that perfect neatness and cleanliness which so 
especially distinguish the English gentleman. 

Ho one observed his change of dress, though every- 
body had noticed the morning’s gray suit. It was rather 
light in color for the season, according to the fashion of 
that day, and had commended itself to Everard from the 
sense of cleanliness that light colors always afforded him. 
Lilian, indeed, observed that the gray coat was replaced 
by a black one, and, in speculating afterward on the sub- 
ject, she came to the conclusion that the black had prob- 
ably been assumed for in-door wear, as being cooler than 
the thick frieze. 

Marion appeared at luncheon, having dropped in on her 
way to Oldport, where she had errands in connection with 
the New-year’s ball at Woodlands. She made a charming 
little face of disappointment at the non-appearance of 


118 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


Cyril ; but the disappointment by no means spoiled her 
appetite, and she kept them all alive by her sprightly 
conversation and playful, endearing ways. She petted 
Mr. Maitland in a most enchanting manner ; teased 
the children and the cat ; was impertinent to Lilian when 
gently rebuked for these misdemeanors ; snubbed her 
brother, according to her usual custom ; and was very 
tender in the little cares she lavished on Mrs. Maitland. 
Her vivacity, and the bright warm-colored style of her 
beauty, and the aerial lightness of her form made a good 
foil to Lilian's repose and gentle dignity, the quieter tones 
of her coloring, and the more majestic development of her 
figure. 

Everard regarded his sister as a charming wayward 
child, loved her little rebellious ways, and put up content- 
edly with all her naughtiness. He was six years her sen- 
ior, and had been the youngest of the family till her birth, 
which cost their mother her life ; and then the orphan 
baby became the object of his tenderest care, and he 
soothed away his own sorrowful sense of orphanhood 
by hovering over the tiny sister's slumbers, and amusing 
her waking moments by all kinds of childish devices. It 
was partly for the baby's sake that he was never sent to 
school ; partly also in obedience to the request of his dead 
mother, who judged, from her experience of the elder 
boys, that the benefits of public schools were overbalanced 
by their contaminations and temptations. All his life 
he had been Marion's devoted slave, and, like other des- 
pots, she received his devotion with a satisfaction not un- 
mingled with contempt. 

“What on earth is Cyril doing in Oldport all day ?" 
Marion asked. “ What business can he possibly have ? " 

“Upon my word, I cannot imagine," replied Mr. 
Maitland, who had not considered the subject before. 

And Marion's question set Everard thinking. Cyril was 
not likely to make many purchases in the little country 
town ; his affairs were in the hands of London lawyers ; 
he could not want money ; he had no friends there ; in 
short, it was very odd that he should spend the day in a 
little market town on business that could not be post- 
poned, and so miss the partly expected visit of Marion. 

Marion, however, carried Mr. Maitland off with her 
after luncheon, on his remembering that he had certain 


THE SILENCE OF LEAN MAITLAND. H9 

commissions to execute, and Lilian drove to Swaynestone 
to pay lier long-promised call on Lady Swaynestone, and 
advise her about her charities according to her request. 
She had a thousand things to do, and was much troubled 
that she could not visit a certain Widow Dove, who lived 
in a lonely cottage on the down, that afternoon, and carry 
her a little present of money. So Henry, finding that he 
could not be allowed to accompany Lilian to Lady 
Swaynestone’s, since the ladies wished to discuss business, 
offered to be Lilians almoner, and was eagerly accepted. 

He saw Lilian and the children off in the pony-carriage, 
and then betook himself to writing some letters in the 
room called Lilian’s ; and, having done this, he remem- 
bered that Lilian had lamented having no time to frame 
and hang the photograph of G-uercino’s picture, and did 
this for her, the frame having heen already furnished by 
the village carpenter. 

In the mean time, at about three o’clock, Cyril ap- 
peared in the drawing-room, where Mrs. Maitland was 
lying on her couch. He had finished his business, got 
some luncheon at Oldport, and been picked up just out 
of the town by Farmer Long, who drove him home in his 
gig, he said. Then, after ten minutes’ chat with his 
mother, he went to his room, telling her that he wished 
to get a sermon ready for the next Sunday, when he was 
to be at work again, and requesting that he might not be 
disturbed till dinner. 

All this Mrs. Maitland told Everard, when he looked 
into the drawing-room a few minutes later. 

“I begged him to put off his sermon-writing till 
another day,” she said, “ for he looked woefully haggard 
and weary; but I could not persuade him. He says he 
feels so burdened until he has got his Sunday’s sermons 
off his mind. Just like his father. He always does his 
sermons on Monday, if he can, and feels a free man for 
the rest of the week.” 

“It is rather odd,” Everard observed, “that Cyril 
should spend so much time in writing his sermons; for 
he is supposed to be an extempore preacher.” 

“ Last Sunday’s sermon was certainly extempore,” his 
mother replied; “he had some manuscript, but scarcely 
referred to it more than once. I wonder if I am a very 
foolish old woman, Henry, for thinking that Cyril has a 


120 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


really singular gift in preaching? His voice appears to 
me to be something quite out of the common. And I 
have heard John Bright’s oratory, and Gladstone’s and 
D’lsraeli’s, the best preachers in our own Church and 
those brilliant Roman Catholics who attracted such 
crowds to Notre Dame.” 

“I think, Mrs. Maitland,” replied Everard, who was 
rather distraught in his manner, since he was nerving 
himself to introduce the topic of his engagement, “that 
Cyril will be reckoned the greatest preacher in the 
Church of England.” 

Then some people called, and Everard made his escape 
as soon as he decently could, and at about a quarter to 
four he started on his walk to Widow Dove’s with a 
light heart. His road was, as far as the wood above the 
Temple, the same as that he had pursued so happily with 
Lilian an hour or two before, and it filled him with 
unspeakable rapture to recall the delightful incidents in 
his morning walk as he went, so that he was dreamy and 
unobservant, and scarcely spoke to the people he met on 
his solitary ramble, a thing very unusual with him. 

The sun was d eclining redly and with great pomp of 
cloud scenery in the west — a glorious ending, he thought, 
of the happiest of happy years; and that was the only 
clew he had to the time of his starting, when referring in 
memory to this fatal walk, since he omitted, in his 
dreamy abstraction, to look at his watch, though he was 
naturally so precise in his habits, and had such a keen 
sense of the passage of time. 

When he reached Widow Dove’s lonely dwelling, he 
found it cold and dark, the door shut, and no smoke issu- 
ing from the chimney; the widow and her daughter were 
evidently gone awaj for a day or two. He felt a sort of 
eerie shiver at the darkness and gloom of the solitary 
homestead, though he little dreamed that his fate or 
the fate of those he loved could be influenced by a cir- 
cumstance so trifling as the emptiness of a secluded 
cottage. 

Then he turned his face homeward in the gathering 
dusk, choosing another way from that by which he came, 
by that strange fatality which pursues doomed men, and 
strode gayly and swiftly along over the open down, every 
dimple and hollow of which were familiar to him from 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


121 


boyhood. Some stars were out now, sparkling keenly in 
the clear, frosty sky, in which the moon had not yet 
risen. Over hedge and ditch, and through copses, and 
round plantations Everard sped blithely, until he 
approached the high-road leading to Malbourne. Here 
his pace slackened, and he listened carefully for the 
sound of Long's wagon-bells, which he thought would 
carry far in the frosty stillness. 

But there was no repetition of the fairy peals which 
rang so blithely in the morning, and he got as far as the 
wheelwright's corner without having heard them. Grove, 
the wagoner, was to bring him a parcel from Oldport, a 
little parcel that he feared might be forgotten if he did 
not intercept it. Here he met Granfer, toiling slowly 
along on his way to spend the evening at Hale's, whose 
wife was one of his numerous descendants. Had Granfer 
heard the team go by? he asked. 

“No, I ain't a-yeard 'em since this marning, zo to zay; 
not as I knows on. Doctor Everard," Granfer replied, 
with his usual circumlocution. “ I 'lows I yeard 'em's 
marning, zure enough. They was a-gwine into Oldport, 
as I hreckons, as you med zay zumwheres about noon or 
thereabouts. No, I 'lows I ain't a-yeard nor a bell zince 
that there; not as I knows on, I ain't." 

After some further conversation, Everard strolled slowly 
on in the direction of Long's farm, full of anxiety about 
his precious packet, which he knew would fade. Near 
Long's he heard that the team had returned some time 
before, and his packet had been sent to the Rectory. 

Striking across the fields, he returned in the deepening 
night, without going through the village, and, meeting 
with a little delay in consequence of an old gap having 
been recently stopped in a fence — a good stiff bullfinch — 
he gained the Rectory at about six o'clock, thus missing, 
to his disgust, the charmed hour of tea. There, when he 
entered, was the precious little box on the hall table, and 
he caught it up and was going to unfasten it in his room, 
when Winnie waylaid him at the foot of the .stairs, eager 
for a romp, which romp resulted in Winnie, while being 
tossed high in air, throwing back her head and striking 
him a tremendous blow in the eye with it, so that he set 
her hastily down with an exclamation of pain, and put 
his hand to his face. 


122 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


“ You/ve done it now, Winnie; blinded me,” he said. 

“Oh, Henry, I am so sorry !” sobbed Winnie. “And 
they won’t let me go to Long’s tea-party to-morrow ; it 
was only on Sunday I made Ingram Swaynestone’s nose 
bleed.” 

“Never mind, darling,” said Everard, kissing and 
soothing her ; “it was not your fault at all.” 

Then he promised to let no one know of his black eye, 
and to do his best to cure it ; to which intent he procured 
raw meat from the kitchen, and went to his room, taking 
Winnie with him to help him unpack the parcel, which 
contained some choice white flowers. These he bid the 
child take to her sister at once, while he shut himself up, 
and tried to subdue the rising inflammation in the bruised 
eye to the best of his ability. 

He was anxious to avoid such an ornament as a black 
eye on his own account, as well as the child’s, since a black 
eye does not improve a man’s appearance at a ball, nor is 
it in keeping with popular ideas of a newly accepted lover. 
So he doctored himself till it was time to get ready for 
dinner, and then, seeing the gray suit lie on the chair as 
he had placed it in the morning, he sponged the green 
stain away from it. Scarcely had he done this when he 
saw other stains, some still wet, and, procuring some 
fresh water, sponged these also. The water was red when 
he finished. 

“Blood,” he thought, being well used to such stains. 
“Did I cut myself anywhere, I wonder ? ” 

He did not, however, waste much thought on this 
trivial incident, but sponged the garments clean in his 
tidy way, and left the crimsoned water in the basin, where 
it subsequently gave Martha, the housemaid, what she 
described as a turn. Then he made his appearance in the 
drawing-room, carefully avoiding the lights, and gave 
rather a lame acount of himself since his return from the 
fruitless errand to the Widow Dove’s. He was rewarded 
for his labor on Lilian’s behalf by the sweetest smile in the 
world, and was enchanted to observe at dinner that 
Lilian wore one of the white roses from his bouquet in her 
dress. 

Cyril did not appear at dinner ; he sent word that one 
of his bad headaches had come on, and begged that he 
might be undisturbed for the night. 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


123 


“ Poor dear Cyril ! ” said Lilian; “ it is so hard for a 
man to have headaches. His are like mine; nothing but 
quiet heals them.” 

“ Their very headaches are twins,” Mr. Maitland 
observed. “Why, Henry,” he added, “what have you 
done to your eye ? You appear to have been in the wars, 
man.” 

Winnie, who was standing by the fire, here threw an 
imploring glance at Henry, and completely scattered what 
few talents he had ever possessed for dissimulation. 

“ I — I — I knocked my head against something in the 
dark,” he stammered; “ I — it was purely accidental.” 

“ What a nasty blow! ” said Lilian, observing it; “you 
will have a black eye. What a pity! Ah, sir! perhaps 
that accounts for your rudeness to me this evening.” 

“ My rudeness, Lilian ? What can you mean ? ” asked 
Henry. 

“ Yes, your incivility to me, and also to Mark Antony, 
who was actually doing you the honor of running to meet 
you — the haughty Mark himself. Think of that! ” 

“ I can only apologize to both with the deepest 
humility,” he replied, stroking the petted animal, who 
was dining with his usual urbane condescension at Lilian’s 
side; “ but indeed I am quite innocent, having seen 
neither you nor puss since you started for Swavnestone.” 

Then Lilian told how at tea-time, on passing from the 
back regions toward the drawing-room, accompanied by 
her usual body-guard, Mark Antony, she had seen Henry 
run across the back-hall toward the staircase; had called 
to him about Widow Dove’s commission; while the cat 
with a mew of delight, had bounded after him. He had 
rushed on, however, in the dusk, a gray, ghost-like figure 
and flitted up the stairs to his room, followed by Mark, 
whom he expelled ignominiously, shutting the door 
after him. 

“ You must be under some delusion,” replied Henry, 
utterly confounded. “ I saw no cat when I came in.” 

“ It was growing very dark,” Lilian said, “ And 
Martha was late in lighting the hall-lamp to-night, for 
which, indeed, I afterward rebuked her. ” 

“The lamps were lighted — ’’Henry began, and then 
stopped at the sight of Winnie, who was gesticulating in 
an agonized manner behind her mother’s chair. “ This 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


124 

sounds extremely ghost-like,” he added; “I hope it 
bodes me no misfortune. It must have been my wraith, 
Lilian.” 

“It sounds rather eerie, certainly,” interposed Mr. 
Maitland. “Lilian dear, I hope you are not going to 
take to seeing people's wraiths. It gives me the most 
fearful jumps to think of.” 

“ I am creeping from head to foot,” added Mrs. Mait- 
land, laughing; “and on the last night of the year, too. 
Doctor Everard, what prescriptions have you for young 
ladies who take to ghost-seeing?” 

“ I am going to ask you for another cutlet, sir. My 
appetite will convince you that I, at least, am no illusion, 
but a substantial reality,” said Henry, instead of reply- 
ing. 

“ There never was any deception about you, Harry 
lad,” returned Mr. Maitland, cordially; “you were 
always real.” 

The evening which ensued ought to have been very 
happy, but somehow it was not. A vague uneasiness was 
in the air; Cyril's absence created a void in the family 
party, and the children, who were permitted to stay up 
for the New Year, grew tired, and consequently tiresome. 
Mr. Maitland, when he recovered from his after-dinner 
nap, which was unusually long, read them one of 
Dickens's Christmas tales, and although it was pleasant 
to Henry to sit by Lilian and watch her beautiful white 
hands at their busy task of embroidering some silken 
flowers, he was not sorry when, the servants having been 
assembled in the drawing-room, a pleasant clinking of 
glasses was heard, and, the usual ceremonies of toasting 
and hand-shaking gone through, the bells began drowsily 
chiming the Old Year out from the belfry hard by. 

They all went into the hall then, Mr. Maitland opened 
the door wide to let the New Year in, and Lilian and 
Henry, hand-in-hand, gazed trustfully out into the starry 
sky to meet it, their hearts full of the sweetest hopes. 

When Henry went to his room soon after, he could not 
refrain from opening Cyril's door, which adjoined his 
own, and just looking in, thinking he might be asleep. 
He pushed the door very softly, and introduced his head. 
Only a faint light was burning from one candle, and by this 
dim ray he saw Cyril kneeling half-dressed before a pic- 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND .* 125 

ture of the Crucifixion. His face was hidden in his 
hands, and he was sobbing in a low, suppressed way. 

Henry shut the door softly, and stealthily withdrew, 
vexed at his own intrusion. “That is not the way to 
cure the headache,” he mused, half awed at the manner 
in which the young priest received the Hew Year. Yet 
who could venture to say that watching and fasting 
and tearful contrition were not eminently fitting, in one 
set apart for holy functions, at such a season? “ I 
wonder,” Everard continued to speculate, “ what infini- 
tesimal peccadilloes the poor lad is mourning with all 
that expenditure of nervous energy? ” Then he thought 
of his own weaknesses and shortcomings, and felt pitchy 
black in contrast with a soul so white. 


CHAPTER XI. 

The wheelwright’s house stood just on the crest of the 
steep little hill which carries the pilgrim down into the 
village of Malbourne with a rapid acceleration of pace, 
and which ends where the four roads meet. The Sun 
[nn stands at one corner, facing the incoming pilgrim 
cheerfully on its left; and opposite this tidy hostelry 
stands a sign-post apparently waving four gaunt arms 
distractedly, and seeming to bid the wayfarer pause 
beneath the thatched roof of the little inn, whether his 
journey’s end lie onward over the high-road, or oblige 
him to turn aside through the village by church and Rec- 
tory. 

On the traveller’s right, facing him, is a cottage, and 
facing that is the wheelwright’s yard, full of timber and 
wagons half built or broken. The wheelwright’s dwell- 
ing, standing above the grassy yard, commands a fine 
view of the village nestled under the down, and the 
sweeping parkland s of Horthover on one side, and on the 
other looks over an undulating landscape to the sea. It 
is a cheery little house, pleasantly shaded by a couple of 
shapely lindens in front, and close to the high-road, upon 
which its front windows and deep-timbered porch give. 

On Hew Year’s Eve the wheelwright’s windows were all 


126 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


lighted up, and there was even a lantern at the little 
front wicket, which gazed out like a friendly eye, as if 
to bid people enter and make merry within, and threw a 
yellow fan-shaped radiance on the steep road without. 
The porch door was open, and disclosed a passage lighted 
by a candle in a tin sconce adorned with holly. On one 
side, an open door revealed the chill dignities of the best 
parlor, which not even a blazing fire and abundance of 
holly berries could quite warm. 

On a hair-cloth sofa in this state apartment sat Mrs. 
Hale, of Malbourne Mill, and Mrs. Wax, the schoolmas- 
ter’s wife, both exceedingly upright, and both holding a 
handkerchief of Gargantuan dimensions over the hands 
they crossed in their laps. Opposite, in a horse-hair arm- 
chair, sat an elderly lady in a plum-colored silk gown, 
gold chain, and a splendid cap, also very upright, and 
also holding a Gargantuan handkerchief. This was Mrs. 
Cave, the wife of a small farmer in the neighborhood. 

Each lady’s face wore a resigned expression, mingled 
with the calm exultation natural to people who know 
themselves to be the most aristocratic persons in a social 
gathering. Each realized that Wilrde hat Biirde, and felt 
herself equal to the occasion; each paused, before mak- 
ing or replying to an observation, to consider the most 
genteel subjects of conversation and the most genteel 
language in which to clothe them. 

“ Remarkably fine weather for the time of year, ladies/’ 
observed Mrs. Hale, soothing her soul by the pleasant 
rustle her shot-silk gown made when she smoothed it, 
and regretting that her gold chain was not so new-fash- 
ioned as Mrs. Cave’s; while, on the other hand, she 
experienced a delicious comfort in meditating on the 
superiority of her brooch, which was a large flat pebble in 
a gold frame. 

“ Indeed, mem, it is most seasonable, though trying 
for delicate chestes,” returned Mrs. Cave, with her finest 
company smile, after which a pause of three minutes 
ensued. 

“ Some say the frost is on the breek,” continued Mrs. 
Hale, wondering if it would be genteel to ask Mrs. Cave 
how much her cap cost. She had an agonized suspicion 
that it would not. 

After five minutes, Mrs. Wax, whose comparative youth 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


127 


and lower rank occasioned her some diffidence, took up 
her parable in the following genteel manner : “ Her 
ladyship was observing this marning — " 

But what her ladyship was observing was never revealed 
to man, since at that moment. Widow Hale, the host's 
mother, came bursting in, stout, healthy, and red-faced, 
her cap slightly awry, and called out in her hearty, 
wholesome voice — 

“ Well, now, my dears, and how are you getting on ? 
I'm that harled up with so many about, I ain't had a 
minute to ast after ye all. Mary Ann, my dear, give me 
a kiss do, and a hearty welcome to you all, and a kiss all 
round, and do make yourselves at home. Now, is the tea 
to your liking ? This best tea-pot ain't much at drawing. 
I ain't much of a one for best things myself ; well enough 
for looking at, and just to say you've got them, but give 
me work-a-day things for comfort. There ain't above half 
the company come yet, and Mary Ann upset about the 
pies for supper. Do just as you would at home, and you 
will please me. If there ain't dear old Granfer coming 
in, bless his heart ! Come in, Granfer, and kindly wel- 
come." 

And so saying, the kind soul bustled out and relieved 
Granfer of his hat, while her daughter-in-law, the actual 
hostess, came to do the honors of the best parlor, bring- 
ing in three more female guests of distinction, who were 
much awed by the appalling gentility of the three already 
assembled, and a little inclined to regret their own social 
importance. 

Granfer and the widow, in the mean time, entered the 
great kitchen, a long, low, whitewashed room, with 
heavy beams across the ceiling, a stone floor, and a wide 
hearth with a wood fire burning between dogs upon it. 
The ceiling and walls wore their everyday decoration of 
hams, guns, a spit, various cooking utensils, a tiny book- 
shelf, and a large dresser, well garnished with crockery 
and pewters, together with their festal Christmas adorn- 
ing of holly, fir, and mistletoe, and a round dozen of tin 
sconces bearing tallow candles. There was an oaken set- 
tle on one side the chimney corner, in the coziest nook 
of which Granfer deposited his bent form with a sigh of 
content, and gazed round upon the assembled guests with 
benevolence. 


128 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


On a long table on trestles at one end of the room was 
spread a solid meal, consisting of a huge ham, own 
brother to those depending in rich brown abundance 
from the ceiling; a south-country skim-milk cheese, 
finely marbled with greenish blue veins, and resembling 
Stilton in reduced circumstances; a great yellow and 
brown mass of roast beef; a huge pie; several big brown 
blocks of plum-cake; and some vast loaves of white 
home-baked bread and pats of fresh butter. The forks 
were of steel, and black handled like the knives; and the 
spoons, of which there was a dearth, were pewter. A 
deficiency of tea-cups suggested to Corporal Tom Hale 
the agreeable expedient of sharing one between a lady and 
a gentleman, which, was hailed with applause by his naval 
brother, and immediately acted upon. 

For those guests who looked upon tea as an enervating 
beverage, there was ample provision in the shape of 
various brown and yellow jugs filled with ale from the 
cask Tom and Jim had procured for the occasion; and it 
was generally understood that liquor of a still more com- 
forting nature was held in reserve to stimulate conviviality 
at a later hour. The blacksmith, Straun, the clerk, 
Stevens, with their wives and families, were there; also 
Baines, the discontented tailor, and the husbands of the 
best-parlor ladies. 

The wheelwright's wife, a comely woman of thirty, and 
his sister, a blooming damsel some ten years younger, 
ran to and fro with flushed faces among the guests, 
while the widow made herself ubiquitous. 

The uniforms of Tom and Jim, with those of three or 
four artillerymen from the neighboring forts, and the red 
coats of a couple of linesmen, together with the bright 
ribbons of the women, lent color and variety to the 
monotony of black coats and smock-frocks, and upon the 
whole the wheelwright's kitchen presented as cheery and 
animated a sight as one would wish to see on a New Year's 
Eve. Nor was a town element wanting in the rustic 
gathering; for just as tea was in full swing, and little 
Dickie Stevens — whose tea lay in the future, after the 
serving of his elders — was supplying the place of a band 
by playing hymn-tunes on his concertina, a taxed-cart 
drove up, and deposited two chilled mortals from Oldport 
Mr. and Mrs. Wells, green-grocers, and related, by some 


THE SILENCE OF LEAN MAITLAND. 


129 


inextricable family complications known only in that 
remote south-country district, more or less to nearly all 
the company. 

Tea being finished, pipes were produced, also ale, and 
there was wild work in a dimly lighted quarter of the 
kitchen, where the Hale brothers had cunningly arranged 
unexpected mistletoe, and whence smothered shrieks of 
laughter and sounds as of ears being vigorously boxed 
issued every now and then. 

The odd part about the mistletoe business was the ex- 
treme gullibility of the ladies, who were by far too guile- 
less to profit by the experience of others in that dangerous 
region, and suffered themselves to be decoyed thither on 
the flimsiest pretexts, and betrayed the utmost surprise 
and indignation at the kissing which invariably ensued. 
As for Tom and Jim, they went to work with a business- 
like determination to kiss gvery girl in the room, and 
several respectable matrons into the bargain. It was 
about this time that the artillery sergeant and the wheel- 
wright's pretty sister Patty vanished, and were subse- 
quently discovered at the front door, enjoying the soft 
December breeze and studying astronomy, a study which 
produced the happiest subsequent results, and set the 
Malbourne bells chiming in the spring of the coming 
year. 

So large and successful a party had not been held in 
Malbourne for many a year, the predominance of the 
military element greatly contributing to its success; for 
the sons of Mars excelled not only in the art of pleasing 
the fairer sex, which has in all ages been considered their 
special function, but possessed many other accomplish- 
ments of social value. A very pretty bit of fencing was 
exhibited between a red and blue coat, and Corporal Tom 
snuffed candles with a pistol, amid shrieks of terrified 
delight from the women. One soldier sang a comic 
another a sentimental song; and when little Dick Stevens 
was perched on a table, and warbled out, “ Rosalie, the 
Prairie Flower," and “Wait for the Wagon," to the 
accompaniment of Wax's clarionet and Baines's violin, the 
kitchen ceiling trembled and threatened to drop its quiv- 
ering hams and hollies at the powerful chorus furnished 
by these stalwart warriors, and the gentility of the best 
parlor was finally melted by it to such a deliquescence as 


130 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


to mingle freely with the vulgar currents circulating in 
the kitchen. 

Indeed, village talent was quite in the shade during the 
first part of the evening, and the discreet Corporal Tom 
observed such depreciation on the faces of the village 
geniuses that he resolved to put ofi asking for the recita- 
tion with which he knew a certain warrior to be primed 
until a later hour, and created a diversion by proposing a 
game of Turn the Trencher, which absorbed the children 
and younger people at one end of the room, and left the 
circle of elders round the chimney free to converse or visit 
the best parlor, where fruit and sherry wine were laid out, 
as they pleased. 

“I seen young Mr. Maitland in Oldport to-day,” 
observed the town green-grocer's lady, one of the fireside 
circle, by way of furnishing the town news to her rustic 
friends. 

“Now, did you, Mrs. Wells?” returned her host. 
“Ah! so you zeen he?” 

“ Yes, Mr. Hale; I seen him go into the bank opposite, 
and stay there — oh! I should think a good hour,” con- 
tinued Mrs. Wells, adjusting her cap-ribbons with a com- 
placent sense of their splendor. “ He's grown more per- 
sonable than ever; but he do look ill, poor young gentle- 
man, to be sure — that white and thin!” 

“ That's living in Lunnun,” said Hale; “ Lunnun takes 
it out of a man. I never held with going to Lunnun my- 
self. Never knowed any good come of it.” 

“Ah, you don't know everything, Jacob Hale!” said 
Granfer, benevolently. “'Tain't, zo to zay, nateral to a 
man as gives hisseif entirely to wheels. You doos your 
best, but more zense can't come out of ye than the 
Almighty have a put in. Na-a. You don't know every- 
thing, Jacob Hale, I zays.” 

. The profundity of this remark produced a deep impres- 
sion, particularly upon the wheelwright, who appeared to 
think he had received a great compliment from Granfer, 
and rekindled his pipe at the burning gorse on the hearth 
with a beatified air. 

“Zeems as though zummat had been a-taking of it out 
of Mr. Cyril, observed the blacksmith, thoughtfully. 

“'Tain't, zo to zay, Lunnon, Jarge Straun,” replied 
Granfer, solemnly. “No Jarge Straun; 'tain't Lunnon, 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


131 


as you med zay. I zes to Bill Stevens 's marning, I zays, 
‘ Bill/ I zays, zays I, ‘ brains is the matter wi' Mr. Cyril/ 
I zays, f that's what's the matter wi' he; ' " and Granfer's 
keen gray eyes took a survey of all the listening, stolid 
faces, and he experienced a keen sense of enjoyment, as 
he leaned forward, his hands crossed on his staff, and 
felt that he was getting into regular conversational swing. 
“ Ay, that's what I zed, zure enough," he added. 

“Brains!" repeated Straun, thoughtfully. “I never 
yeard of nobody dying of brains, as I knows on." 

“You ain't a-yeared everythink, Jarge Straun," re- 
turned Granfer, severely. “Ay, you med mark my 
words, it all hruns to brains wi' Mr. Cyril; there ain't, as 
you med zay, nothing left to hrun to vlesh and vat, what- 
ever he med put inside of hisself. Mankind is like the 
vlower o' the vield : where it all hruns to vlower, there 
ain't zo to zay, zo much leaf as you med swear by; then, 
again, I tell 'ee, where it all hruns to leaf, you’can't expect 
no vlower to speak on. Look at brocoli!" 

Here Granfer, being fairly launched, struck out 
from personal to general observations, and thence, at the 
prompting of his grandson, to the hoary regions of his- 
tory. 

“Ay, I minds Boney, to be zure — well I minds he;" 
and he related the oft-told tale of the frequent scares the 
inhabitants of those coasts received, sometimes by authen- 
tic rumors of Bonaparte's appearance at sea, sometimes by 
the accidental or mistaken kindling of the beacons on 
every prominent headland and on the downs, where a 
watch was kept day and night for the appearance of the 
dreaded foe. 

He told how the wealthy farmers sent their silver and 
other valuables, sometimes including even their women 
and children under the latter head, inland for safety — most 
of them, apparently, having first consulted Granfer on 
the subject — in consequence of Bonaparte's rumored 
descents on that fated coast ; also of the rousing of the 
volunteers at the dead of night on one of these occasions 
— of their march to the sea-shore, and their all getting 
lost on the way, and arriving next morning on a scene of 
profound peace. Then came the great smuggler story, 
and the tragic history of the loss of the ship “ Halifax," 
the crew and passengers of which lay buried in the wind 


132 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


swept churchyard near the fatal shore which wrecked 
them. Five young women were among those washed 
ashore and subsequently buried, and their appearance, as 
Granfer saw them, lying pale and beautiful side by side 
awaiting burial, was the climax of this story : after 
delivering it he usually paused and looked round for 
some moments with working lips to enjoy the silence of 
the interested listeners. 

Having thus got his audience, which consisted mainly 
of village seniors, well in hand, Granfer began, to the 
accompaniment of the young people’s continuous laughter, 
somewhat softened by distance, to play upon their love of 
the marvellous and the horrible, and produced some 
delightful creeps by his eerie tales; and finally landed 
himself in his renowned narrative of his midnight adven- 
ture upon Down End, a bleak, storm-stricken eminence, 
where the last man gibbeted in these parts, a truculent 
villain, with a most romantic history, then swung in 
chains. 

Granfer had been belated on a moonless, cloudy night, 
had wandered far in the cutting wind, and had begun to 
guess that he had at last done with the downs, and 
reached the well-known Down End — an unpleasant spot 
for a midnight stroll, since, besides the unwelcome 
presence of the murderer on his gibbet, an extensive chalk 
quarry there supplied an array of little precipices high 
enough to cost one slipping over the edge his life. 

Granfer had arrived at a vague mass looming through 
the darkness, a dim something , which he conjectured to 
be the sign-post, an erection which shared the same emi- 
nence with the gibbet at many -yards distance from it, 
and was about to strike a light with the flint and steel in 
his pocket to a weird accompaniment of shrieks and 
moans and unholy riot of clankings and hissings, which 
might be only the voices of the midnight storm, but, on 
the other hand, might he what Granfer wisely left to his 
hearers’ imaginations, when “all on a zuddent there 
comes a girt bang on the shoulders of me, vlint and steel 
vlies out of my hands, and down I goos, vlat as a vlounder 
on my vaace, wi’ zummat atop o’ me,” the old man was 
saying, his wrinkled face and keen eyes lighted by the 
blazing gorse fire and his own imagination, while Straun 
and Hale, and the other worthies, with open mouths. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN 2 MAITLAND. 133 

staring eyes, and dropped pipes, and the women, with 
various contortions of visage and extensive clasping of 
shivering hands, gazed with tense, strained attention 
upon the withered, eager countenance, when the door 
burst open, and William Grove, supported by Corporal 
Tom, staggered into the kitchen, white-faced and trem- 
bling, and fell into a chair placed for him in the centre 
of the room, clapping his hands convulsively upon his 
knees, and exclaiming at intervals, “Oh, Lard! Oh, 
Lard ’a massy! " and the sudden apparition, coming thus 
upon strained nerves and excited imaginations, produced 
a most alarming effect. 

The women screamed and clung to one another; the 
men uttered ejaculations; the game of Turn the Trencher 
broke up in dismay, and the players came clustering 
round the distracted Grove; while the services of the 
military were called into requisition to soothe the terrors 
and agitations of the prettiest girls, the gallant sergeant 
finding it necessary to place his arm round the blooming 
form of Miss Patty Hale for the distressed damsel's 
support. 

“ Lard 'a massey! Willum Grove," exclaimed Granfer 
at last, with impatience, “ if you ain't got nothink better 
to zay than Lard 'a massey, you med zo well bide quiet, I 
tell 'ee. Lard love 'ee, Willum, you never had no zense 
to speak on, but you be clane dunch now. Ay, Willum 
be clane dunch” he added; while the astute Tom, who 
said that William had come flying in at the porch door 
(where the gallant corporal had been helping pretty Miss 
Uave to admire the moon), and could be prevailed upon 
to make no other observation than that so scornfully 
censured by Granfer, assisted the wagoner's faculties by a 
timely draught of ale. After disposing of this, and dry- 
ing his mouth with the back of his hand, William re- 
covered slightly and found his tongue. 

“Lard 'a massey on us all!" he cried; “they been an' 
done for poor Ben Lee." 

“Done for him!" cried a chorus of voices in various 
tones of horror and dismay. 

“ Done var en, zure enough!" repeated William, rock- 
ing himself backward and forward, in a strange contrast 
to his usual stolidity. “We bin an' vound the body! " 

It was even so. Ben Lee left his home at dinner-time. 


134 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


and had not returned. At tea-time, Mrs. Lee was return- 
ing in the dusk from an errand to Malbourne, and met a 
hurrying figure clad in gray, as she came through the 
fields beneath the wood, which was on the crest of the 
hill above the Temple. She found only Alma in the 
house, and after waiting with more discontent than dis- 
quiet, she concluded that work had delayed her husband, 
and finally took her tea and seated herself at her needle 
work by the fire. 

At half-past seven Sir Lionel and Lady Sway nest one, 
with their daughter, were dressed for a dinner party and 
awaiting the arrival of the carriage, which had been 
ordered at that hour. But no carriage appeared, and a 
message to the stables elicited the news that the coach- 
man had not been there since the afternoon, when 
Ingram Sway nest one chanced to have seen him near his 
home. A messenger to the Temple returned with the 
tidings that he had not been home; and then Judkins 
asked for an audience with Sir Lionel, which resulted in 
a search-party being sent forth to find the missing man, 
whose habits were regular and punctual. 

William Grove, who chanced to be on some errand to 
Swaynestone for his master before going to the wheel- 
wright's party, assisted in the search, and was with 
Judkins when Lee was discovered quite dead in the wood 
above his home. There were no signs of any struggle on 
the hard frozen path, whence his body had evidently 
been dragged into the fern and brush, whither it was 
traced by the marks on the rime- covered moss and the 
disorder of the ferns and brambles. A slight wound on 
the face, which had bled, but could not have killed him, 
was the only sign of violence at first seen. 

The lights were not extinguished at Swaynestone 
House till nearly dawn. Sir Lionel, who was a magis- 
trate, set to work at once to investigate the fatal affair, 
the police were immediately informed, and every mem- 
ber of the Swaynestone household was closely questioned, 
as well as Mrs. Lee. Poor Alma could not be subjected 
to much interrogation, and was not in a position to throw 
any light upon the tragedy. Death was not the only 
visitor at the Temple; a new life, scarcely less tragic 
than death, began there on that fatal night, and the New 
Year rose upon sorrow and dismay in hall and cottage. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 135 

It took long to extract what lie knew of the affair from 
William Grove, but this was at length accomplished, amid 
varied comment and ejaculation. Granfer said no 
further word until the whole truth had been elicited, and 
then upon the first favorable pause he looked round with 
an air of great solemnity, and took up his parable thus: 
“ You med all mark my words. Zomebody’ll hae to 
swing for this yere. Ay, I’ve said it, and I'll zay it agen: 
zomebody’ll hae to swing." 


CHAPTER XII. 

Next to the divine sweetness of youthful love, nothing 
so completely charms and enthralls us as the rapid devel- 
opment of new ideas and the swift inrush of fresh knowl- 
edge in the spring-time of life. How the world widens 
to the eager student, what vast and endless horizons open 
out to his gaze, as he acquires fresh knowledge ! What a 
sense of power his thoughts give him as they draw to- 
gether from the vague of scattered speculations, and 
take definite shape before him ! Love unlocks the gate 
of a yet undiscovered world of emotion, which has its 
higher and lower circles, its purgatory and paradise,, and 
its endless possibilities beyond; knowledge and ripening 
thought rend the obscuring veils from the illimitable 
universe. The enthusiastic delight of fresh discovery is 
in both cases the very elixir of life; nay, it is life itself. 

On the last day of the year, Everard discovered the new 
world of love; and on New Year’s morning, under the 
stimulus of a fresh happiness, a theory, after which he 
had long been groping with many a vague surmise and 
hazardous hypothesis, interrupted by hopeless gaps in 
evidence, suddenly revealed itself complete and flawless 
before him. It came like an electric shock, with such a 
happy flash of inspiration that he was obliged to pause in 
his dressing to take in the results of the unconscious cer- 
ebration which his studies and speculations had set up, 
while- tears of joy rushed to his eyes. Clear and distinct 
as it was to his own mind, he knew that years of patient 
labor and minute scientific investigations must pass 


136 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


before he could present it to other minds, but he knew 
also that, once verified, it would make an epoch in the 
study of physiology. 

Such a superabundance of happiness as Everard’s 
might well excite the malignity of envious gods, and 
would have prompted an ancient Greek to throw away 
some precious thing in all haste. But being a Christian 
Englishman, Everard did not follow the example of 
Polycrates; nay, had he been a Greek of old days, he 
would never have imputed envy or malignity to the strong 
immortals. Strength was to him a guarantee of good- 
ness, because his own strength made him noble and kind; 
it made him also pitiful to the malice and spite of weak 
things. 

Full of this new rapture, his eyes hazy with abstrac- 
tion, as the eyes of dreamers are hazy with dreams, 
Everard went forth to meet the New Year’s new joy like 
one borne upon clouds, and reached the breakfast-room 
just at the end of prayers. Mr. Maitland, according to 
custom, was dismissing the maids with a kind good- 
morning and New Year’s wish, when Eliza, whose face 
was stained with tears, paused with a spasmodic, “ Oh, 
please, sir!” 

“You are discomposed, Eliza,” said Mr. Maitland, 
gently, while he looked round and observed similar pertur- 
bation on the faces of the other maids. “Nothing 
wrong, I hope?” 

“Poor Ben Lee!” sobbed Eliza, resorting to her hand- 
kerchief. 

“He was found dead, sir,” added Martha the house- 
maid, her grief, which was sincere, tempered by a certain 
delight in the tragically impressive. 

“ It was Stevens brought the news,” added the cook, 
who was also not impervious to the pleasure of communi- 
cating disastrous intelligence. 

“Found dead! My good girls! In Heaven’s name 
where? when? Oh, surely not! Where is Stevens?” 
cried Mr. Maitland, as much agitated as the heart of 
woman could desire. “Oh, those poor Lees! What 
trouble! what trouble!” 

“It was last night, sir,” continued Eliza, much 
refreshed by her master’s perturbation, and by the 
copious tears with which she had accompanied the 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


137 


broken narrative. “ Sir Lionel had lanterns sent out 
for him." 

“ He did not die in his bed, then?" the deep voice of 
Everard broke in. 

“ He was hid away in the wood," replied Martha; “ and 
they do say — " 

“ I must go to the Temple at once," interrupted Mr. 
Maitland, starting off to get his hat, with an injunction 
to the women not to talk over the tragedy, which he 
might as well have addressed to the wind. 

Lilian with great difficulty succeeded in keeping him 
back until ^he had made him drink some coffee, and take 
a little food, when he started off at railroad speed, bidding 
her tell the clerk there would be no service that morning. 
Then Henry and Lilian and the two children sat down to 
a melancholy breakfast, and the discussion of the tragedy 
of which they gathered from the servants as much as 
William Grove had communicated on the previous night, 
together with a fine growth of conjecture and exaggera- 
tion. 

“ Poor Alma!" sighed Lilian, when her father was 
gone. “ Oh, Henry! what do you think of it?" 

“Iam afraid it looks rather dark," returned Henry, 
not observing the entrance of Eliza with a hot dish. 
“ Lee’s behavior, when last I saw him, was most unac- 
countable. His trouble evidently preyed on his mind, 
poor fellow." 

“Oh, Henry! what do you mean? Hot — " 

“ An unhinged mind quickly turns to suicide," replied 
Henry, suddenly checking himself as he became aware of 
the wide gaze of Winnie’s eyes immediately opposite him. 

Five minutes after, the whole of Malbourne knew that 
Dr. Everard had received the intelligence with little sur- 
prise, and at once ascribed it to suicide. 

Cyril had started for Woodlands before breakfast, leav- 
ing a charming note of Hew Year’s wishes for everybody, 
and saying that it was incumbent on him to go to Wood- 
lands at once, to apologize for his incivility in not meet- 
ing Marion on the previous day. 

“What a devoted lover!" Mr. Maitland had observed, 
on hearing the note read. “Well, man has but one 
spring-time, though the birds renew their youth every 
year." 


138 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


“I think, papa,” said Winnie, in one of those sudden 
visitations of acuteness which befall little girls occasion- 
ally, “that Cyril is not so devoted to loving as to being 
loved.” 

And Lilian knew that the child had hit on her brother’s 
weak point. 

After breakfast, Everard accompanied Lilian and the 
children on a visit to the invalid donkey and other dumb 
dependents. It was pleasant to see Lilian in the poultry- 
yard. When she entered the yard she gave a little coo, 
and a flock of pigeons, preening themselves aloft on 
gable and roof in the sunshine, came fluttering down, a 
rustling crowd of white wings, and settled upon her till 
she seemed a parody on Lot’s wife, a pillar of birds in- 
stead of salt, while the more adventurous fowls sprang up 
and pecked the grain from her basket and her hands, till 
she scattered pigeons, fowls, and all, with a light 
“Hish!” and wave of her arms. 

Everard, the children, and the two dogs stood apart to 
watch this little scene, Everard smoking tranquilly, and 
delighting in the picture of Lilian involved in her cloud 
of dove-like wings. During this progress he told her 
eagerly of the theory which had been born in his brain 
that morning, and they both discussed it, Lilian being 
sufficiently grounded in science to comprehend something 
of the importance of the subject, and having, moreover, 
the receptive intellect which readily admits half-grasped 
notions. 

“We shall have to work hard for this,” Everard said, 
knowing that Lilian would willingly take her share of the 
toil. 

“It will be well worth hard work,” she replied, joy- 
ously; “ but I have other work now, so I must go in. 
No; I have not told mother,” she added, in reply to a 
whispered question from Henry; “I would rather it came 
from you.” 

“ And I have had no opportunity as yet,” he said. 
“So I have to skate with these scamps, have I ? Very 
well ; but join us as soon as you can, Lilian.” 

“ And mind you bring some cake,” added Lennie, who 
was nothing if not practical ; and the children, hanging 
one on each of Everard’s hands, danced joyously ofl into 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


139 


Nort hover Park, where they were to skate on a piece of 
water a quarter of a mile off. 

Just as they entered the gate by the lodge, Lyster 
Garrett was leaving it. He looked at Henry with some 
surprise, and received his greeting very stiffly. 

“ Oh, do come and skate, Lyster ! ” cried Lennie ; 
<f then you can help me, and Winnie can have Henry to 
herself.” 

“ I am going to Swaynestone,” Garrett said. “ This is 
a sad business of Lee's. Foul play, I fear ;” and he 
looked searchingly at Everard. 

“ Foul play ?” returned Everard. “ Nonsense! Why 
I suppose poor Lee never had an enemy in his life.” 

“He had one,” said Garrett, with marked emphasis, 
“I should strongly recommend that person to make him- 
self scarce.” 

“Lee was not a man to make enemies, poor fellow,” 
replied Everard. “ It will all come out at the inquest, 
no doubt. Mr. Maitland is gone to the Temple to com- 
fort the poor widow.” 

And they passed on, Everard wondering what on earth 
was the matter with young Garrett, who was studying for 
the Bar, and was rather inclined to look upon human 
existence as raw material to be worked up in courts of 
justice. 

“The world doesn't look much older than it did yester- 
day, Henry,” observed Winnie, thoughtfully; “yet it's 
sixty-three, and yesterday it was only sixty-two.” 

Henry did not reply, but looked reflectively at the 
frozen landscape and clouded sky, whence the sun had 
been shining half an hour before. There was a vague 
misgiving within him; Garrett's hints flung a shroud of 
dark conjecture over the Lee tragedy, which he had for- 
gotten for the moment. The world did look older to 
him, and it seemed a whole year since yesterday. But 
the pond was soon reached, and the children's skates and 
his own had to be fitted on at the expense of freezing 
fingers and stagnant blood, which a few turns in the 
biting air set right again. Then the Garrett ladies 
appeared, and there was quite a little party on the ice, 
and the children having by this time learnt to go alone, 
Henry indulged himself in some artistic skating, and the 
world grew young again, and he did not observe that 


140 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


Miss Garrett and her sister declined all his offers of assist- 
ance, and avoided him as much as the small extent of the 
little lake would permit. 

“ I am not sure that I shall marry Ingram Swayne- 
stone, after all,” Winnie observed to Lilian, when she 
arrived with the promised cake in an hour's time. “ I 
think pw'aps I shall have Henwy when I gwow up." 

“ There was nobody in the world like Ingram yester- 
day," Lilian laughed; “ so I suppose your skating in- 
structions have been more successful than his, Henry." 

“This is rather a dismal New Year's morning," Lilian 
said to Henry, who was busily engaged in fitting on her 
skates. “ Those poor Lees haunt me, and the servants 
say there are such dreadful surmises about Ben's death. 
I wish Cyril were here. I wonder what he is doing?" 

Cyril at that moment was in the library at Woodlands, 
comfortably seated in a deep arm-chair by a blazing fire. 
The laity of the male kind were shooting- Marion, and 
her sister, Mrs. Whitetord, were busily employed with 
the other ladies in decorations and arrangements for the 
impending ball. Cyril had taken refuge in the library 
with a book that he was utterly unable to read, and was 
sorry to find that George Everard had followed ,his exam- 
ple. 

The Rev. George had assumed that attitude on the 
hearth-rug which means conversation, and the disposition 
of his coat-tails was such as forebodes a long discourse, 
as Cyril observed with inward groans. Cyril's face was 
strained and haggard; his mind was in the tense, over- 
wrought condition which craves solitude and repose; and 
he racked his brains for some pretext to escape from his 
brother-clergyman, who had the advantage of' being his 
senior by many years, and whose theology was of a kind 
to fill Cyril with despair, since George belonged to the 
straightest sect of the Evangelicals. 

Mr. Everard began by commenting upon his young 
brother's worn appearance, and accusing him of fast- 
ing. 

“ I fasted," replied Cyril, “because I was too unwell to 
eat. And if I received the New Year with watching 
and prayer you will surely allow that I might have done 
worse." 

“ Truly. I could wish many to follow vour example. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


141 


Maitland; but not to the injury of this fleshly tabernacle, 
as I fear you have done. Such misdirected zeal amounts 
to excess, and that will-worship against which we are 
cautioned. You played a very poor part at breakfast, I 
observed.” 

Cyril smiled, for he had observed, on his part, George 
Everard's vigorous onslaught upon his father's well- 
spread breakfast-table, and he replied that his lack of 
appetite was due to his own folly in taking a long walk 
fasting after a day of headache. “ Indeed, I am 
thoroughly knocked up,” he added, wearily. 

“ My dear young friend,” continued George, solemnly, 
“ I have become deeply interested in you. I perceive 
that you are a very precious vessel.” 

In spite of his weariness, and the strange hunted look 
that made him appear to start at every sound, as if 
expecting evil tidings, Cyril’s face kindled and gained an 
added charm at these words. Appreciation was the very 
breath of life to him, and he felt that he had hitherto 
thought too slightingly of George, who perhaps, after all 
could not help being evangelical, and consequently rather 
slangy in his religious conversation. He made a graceful 
allusion to their impending relationship, thanked George 
for his good opinion, and expressed a hope that they 
might know more of each other before long. 

“ I have wrestled in prayer for you,” continued the 
elder priest. “I shall continue to wrestle, that you may 
come to know the truth, and that you may have strength 
to resist the seductions of the Scarlet Woman. I observe 
great powers in you — singular powers; powers that may 
effect much in the vineyard, if you only devote them to 
your Master's service; powers which, unsanctified, will 
lead you into great temptations.” 

“ I am in for it,” thought Cyril, who disliked listening 
to other people’s sermons as much as doctors object to 
taking their own prescriptions; “ he is wound up for at 
least six heads.” But his face wore the most winning 
expression of interest and the deference due 4o one so 
much older in the ministry than himself, while he replied 
modestly that he was aware that some talents had been 
vouchsafed him, and did not intend to hide them in a 
napkin, but that he thought perhaps his dear brother 
rated him too highly in the kindness of his heart. 


142 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


At which Everard smiled paternally, and proceeded to 
speak of Cyril's gifts — his agreeable manner and power of 
winning hearts, his eloquence, his intellectual polish, and 
his musical and flexible voice, and pointed out to him the 
peculiar power these would give him in his ministerial 
capacity. 

“Not that these mere carnal gifts are anything in 
themselves," he continued; “ they are but nets to catch 
men. The nets are not necessary, but it pleases the 
Lord to work by means, and those to whom much is 
given will have much to answer for. In short, you have 
very singular opportunities of doing good work in the 
vineyard. I am thankful that you have been moved to 
enter the ministry. You might have had a more bril- 
liant career in a worldly calling. But what you have 
undertaken is worth any sacrifice. And no man, having 
once put his hand to the plow, may dare to look back." 

George Everard was not destitute of the human weak- 
ness that leads us to believe in the value of our own good 
advice, but he would have been rather startled if he could 
have known the powerful effect his words had upon his 
susceptible and impulsive listener's mind. 

“ I have put my hands to the plow," said Cyril, taking 
away the hands in which he had buried his haggard face 
during this exordium, and speaking in those deep, strong 
chest-notes which so stirred the fibre of his listeners' 
hearts; “ I will never turn back. I call you to witness, 
George Everard, in the face of high Heaven, that I will 
never turn back, and that I will make any and every 
sacrifice for the sake of this my high calling and 
vocation." 

Cyril rose from his seat as he spoke, and raised one 
hand with an impressive gesture. All the languor and 
dejection vanished from his face and form; a dazzle of 
pale-blue fire came from his eyes; his every feature kin- 
dled; his whole being expressed an intensity of feeling 
that almost frightened Everard, who felt something like 
a child playing with matches and suddenly kindling a 
wood-pile. He could only ejaculate faintly, “My dear 
young friend!" while Cyril paced the room with firm 
strides and loftily erect head, a thing of grace and spirit- 
like beauty, and at last paused in front of George with 
such a glance of fire as seemed to pierce through and 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


143 


through the soul of the elder man, and offered him his 
hand, saying, “Do you bear me witness?" 

“ I do indeed,’’ faltered the other, overcome by the 
sight of an emotion beyond his conception, accustomed 
though he was to a purely sentimental form of religion ; 
and he pressed Cyril’s fevered hand in his own cool one, 
uttering some words of prayer and blessing, thinking 
that possibly one of the sudden conversions he so con- 
stantly preached about and so rarely discovered any traces 
of in actual life, had taken place. 

“ Your words," said Cyril, quietly after a time, “were 
like a spark to a train of gunpowder. They came at a 
moment of internal wrestling, and helped me to a 
decision." 

George Everard replied that he was blessed in being the 
unworthy instrument of speaking a word in season, and 
proceeded to admonish his convert at length; while Cyril, 
with all the fire quenched in his look and bearing, sat 
drooping and haggard beneath the cold, unimpassioned 
gaze of his counselor, busied with his own thoughts, and 
occasionally smiling a little inward smile as the well-worn 
phrases and various allusions to the Scarlet Woman fell 
on his wearied ear. 

“In conclusion, dear Cyril," George said at length, “I 
must bid you beware of women." 

Cyril started and flushed, but Everard smiled and con- 
tinued — 

“Do not mistake me. You have hitherto had no 
temptation from that source; the monastic discipline of 
your life at St. Chad’s, however mistaken, has at least 
that advantage. But, my dear brother, you will find the 
weaker vessels a stumbling-block and a constant thorn in 
the flesh of the Christian pastor. Our sisters have a fatal 
habit of mixing personal with religious feeling." 

Here he sighed deeply, and Cyril suddenly remembered 
a legend to the effect that the Rev. George, in his curate 
days, possessed a large cupboard full of unworn slippers 
worked by the faithful sisters of his flock. “Thinking 
that they love # the manna furnished them by the faithful 
shepherd, they too often, and perhaps unconsciously, 
cherish a tenderness for the shepherd himself, and this 
leads to much that does not conduce to edifying. Such 
feelings are indeed harmless; but, though all things are 


144 THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 

lawful unto me, all things are not expedient, especially,” 
he added, with unguarded confidence, “when one's wife 
is inclined to be jeal — Well, you know, a young pastor 
should be prepared. And let no man be too sure of him- 
self. Our poor sisters constantly want spiritual advice; 
let them seek it of an aged pastor. I would counsel you, 
whose manners and appearance are so strikingly calculated 
to impress weaker vessels with admiration, to confine your 
personal ministrations to men and elder sisters. You 
will be run after as a popular preacher, and women will 
be a snare to you, as tending to bring discredit on your 
calling, and giving occasion to the enemy to blaspheme. 
The Christian pastor must not only abstain from all evil, 
but from all appearance of evil — nay, the remotest 
suspicion of it. Our light has to shine strongly before 
men.” 

“I feel that most keenly,” replied Cyril, roused to 
interest. “ I feel that the lightest imputation upon us is 
absolutely fatal to our influence; that we are bound to a 
far stricter life than others. By the way, Everard, a very 
difficult case of conscience was submitted to our rector 
some years ago. There was a man doing good work in a 
parish consisting mainly of cultured and wealthy people, a 
man who had great personal influence. That man in early 
youth had done a wrong, which he bitterly repented, to 
atone for which he would have given years of his life — 
perhaps even life itself. A girl ” — Cyril paused, and a 
thick sobbing sigh caught his breath and impeded his 
utterance — “ a girl had been, alas ! led astray. She died 
by her own hand. Years after, when the penitent was in 
the height of his usefulness, a man who had loved this 
girl found him out, and attempted to avenge the un- 
happy girl’s death by killing him. He attacked him in a 
lonely spot, on a ledge of narrow cliff.” Cyril paused 
again, and moistened his parched lips, passing his hand- 
kerchief over his damp, chill forehead at the same time. 
“ There was a struggle for life — no violence on the 
priest’s part; only the instinctive struggle for self-preser- 
vation — and the would-be assassin was hurled over the 
cliff to his death.” Cyril paused once more, and caught 
his breath chokingly. “No suspicion was aroused; the 
verdict was accidental death. The clergyman gave no 
evidence. He went on his usual way, and no one ever 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


145 


guessed that his hand — the hand which gave the sacred 
elements! — had sent a fellow-creature to his grave. The 
question which concerned our rector was, whether the 
unintentional homicide ought to have volunteered his 
evidence, and confessed his involuntary share in the poor 
creature's death. You see," continued Cyril, suddenly 
lifting his face to his listener, “he must have brought 
up the old scandal if he had done so, and that, coupled 
with the mystery about the death, would have utterly 
ruined his career as a Christian pastor." 

“True," replied George, thoughtfully studying the 
intricacies of the Turkey carpet. “ How did your rector 
obtain possession of these facts?" 

“ The poor fellow confided in him — came to him for 
advice in his trouble." 

“ And what was the advice?" 

“ It was never given. Agitation of mind brought on 
severe illness, which proved fatal. The rector found 
it difficult to arrive at any decision. What do you 
think?" 

“ Truly, my dear young friend, the case is perplexing. 
Had the question been referred to me, I should certainly 
have made it a matter of earnest prayer. As a mere 
abstract question, I feel inclined to favor the erring pas- 
tor's course of action. A revelation of the truth would 
doubtless have given great occasion to the enemy to 
blaspheme." 

Cyril heaved a sigh of relief. “ Very true," he replied, 
sinking back into the depths of his easy-chair, whence 
he quickly started in nervous tremor as the door sud- 
denly- opened, and glanced apprehensively round, to see 
nothing more terrible than the bright face and light fig- 
ure of Marion. 

“Oh! here you are, you bad boys, looking as grave as 
two owls." she said in her light delicate treble. 
“ George, your wife wants you in the drawing-room at 
once." 

The obedient husband rose immediately, but paused 
lingeringly at the door. “We will discuss the matter 
further," he said. “ Cyril and I have been having the 
most interesting conversation, Marion. I have passed a 
refreshing morning with him. We have more in common 
than I supposed." 

10 


146 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


And with an indulgent tap of his young sister’s cheek, 
George vanished, and left the lovers alone, Marion 
charmed to find such harmony established between the 
two ecclesiastics, who bid fair at one time to differ as 
only those of the same creed under slightly varying 
aspects can differ. 

“ Isn't it provoking, Cyril ?” she cried. “Here is a 
telegram from Leslie, to say he cannot spare time to 
come to-night, and his regiment does not embark till the 
third. If any one wants to wish him good-bye, they can 
run over to Portsmouth to-morrow. I dare say, indeed! 
The other officers are coming; but we shall be short of 
men, I fear.” 

“Is that all?” returned Cyril, with a sigh of relief; 
for he had turned pale and shuddered at the sight of his 
telegram. “Well, dearest, let us run over with your 
father and Keppel to-morrow, and wish them all good- 
bye at once. I rather envy the admiral going on the 
Mediterranean station at this murky season.” 

“ You poor boy!” exclaimed Marion, placing her hand 
upon his burning brow; “you look as if you needed some 
kind of a change. I am afraid your head is still ach- 
mg.” 

“It is maddening,” returned Cyril, detaining the 
caressing hand. “ To tell the truth, I am very unwell. 
I ought not to have walked this morning.” 

“ Indeed you ought not. I saw that you were quite 
lame from fatigue.” 

“ And who is to blame for my walk?” returned Cyril, 
with forced gayety; “who but Miss Everard? I suppose 
I caught cold in Long's gig yesterday afternoon. I had 
no overcoat, meaning to walk. I feel as if I had been 
beaten all over.” 

“Poor dear!” said Marion tenderly. “And you actu- 
ally have a little bruise here over the temple,” she added, 
touching the place which was tender even to her velvet 
touch. 

“Oh, that's nothing!” Cyril replied hastily; but he 
rose and approached a small mirror, into which he gazed 
apprehensively. “ Ah, yes, I dressed in a hurry, and hit 
myself with a hair-brush. And this,” he added, pointing 
to a strip of plaster on his chin, “ I did in shaving.” 

“What can we do for you?” asked Marion. “I was 


THE SILENCE OF LEAN MAITLAND. 


147 


going to ask you to carry some plants from the conserva- 
tory, but you must not.” 

“ Come and sit by me, dear,” Cyril replied, in his 
gracefully autocratic manner; “ there is no anodyne like 
your presence.” 

So the lovers remained hand-in-hand by the library fire 
a good hour, Marion’s bright eyes and caressing tones 
worshipping Cyril, who appreciated nothing so much as 
incense. 

George Everard, in the mean time, was telling his wife 
what unexpected graces he had discovered in his future 
brother-in-law. “ A very precious soul,” he said. "‘He 
only needs Christian influence.” 

Mrs. Everard knew well that, according to the usage 
of her husband’s tribe, the word Christian was not appli- 
cable to either of the Maitlands. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

When" the little skating-party reached the Rectory, Mr. 
Maitland had not returned from his errand of charity, 
nor did he appear when luncheon was served. The meal 
was delayed half an hour, and then took place without 
him. Mrs. Maitland was depressed at the melancholy 
opening of the New Year, and Henry had devoted himself 
to the task of cheering and amusing her. 

He read to her for a good hour before luncheon, while 
Lilian wrote notes, and the children, tired with the 
morning’s exercise, buried themselves in books of their 
own. “ The Prisoner of Chillon,” for which Mrs. Mait- 
land had an amiable weakness, formed part of the read- 
ing, and Henry was rewarded for his rendering of it by 
the following observation from Lennie, who had not 
appeared to be listening — ” You should hear Cywil read 
that, Henry! You can’t hold a candle to him.” Where- 
upon Everard, in revenge, took him up by the waistband 
with one hand, and carried him out into the hall, where 
he stuck him up in a niche intended for a lamp, and 
whence Lennie had an uninterrupted view through the 
hall window and down the village street. 


148 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


“Oh, I say,” he cried, “look at all those policemen!” 
and Henry, looking out saw a couple of blue-coated con- 
stables standing chattering with the villagers, one group 
just outside the Rectory gate. 

“Don't say anything about it before your mother, 
Lennie,” he said, lifting the boy down from his perch. 
“They are making inquiries about Ben Lee, that's all.'' 

They were finishing their meal, when Mr. Maitland's 
step was heard in the hall, and Lilian went out to meet 
him. To all her inquiries, he said that he wished to be 
alone for a little, and desired that wine and food might 
be sent to the study for him. 

“ He is a good deal upset, no doubt,'' commented Mrs. 
Maitland. “ I sometimes think, Lilian, that your father 
is too sensitive for a parish priest.'' 

“What would he be as a doctor, Mrs. Maitland?'' 
Everard asked, laughing. 

“ Oh, Henry, we all know that only exceptionally hard 
hearts can endure that profession,” she replied, to the 
indignation of Winnie, who maintained that the medical 
profession induced a particular tenderness of heart, as was 
manifested by the specimen they had in Henry. 

They were about to leave the dining-room, when Eliza 
in a great state of flutter, appeared to say that Mr. Mait- 
land wished to see Dr. Everard in his study, whither 
Everard repaired with a dim sense of impending disaster. 
It was not an auspicious moment for speaking of his 
engagement to Lilian, and yet he felt that the momen- 
tous question was about to be decided. Could it be that 
Mr. Maitland had gathered some hints of his relations 
with her, and wished to put an end to it at once? Or, 
was he merely giving him an opportunity of declaring his 
intentions? 

As Everard crossed the hall, Snip and Snap ran growl- 
ing before him, and barked at an unseen figure standing 
outside the door. Mark Antony also ran out with a sus- 
picious look and angry eyes; but Everard was too full of 
his own reflections to observe the animals. He whistled 
slightly to put himself at ease, and was ashamed to feel 
his heart beating like a girl’s as he paused to open the 
study door. He entered, closing it behind him. 

Mr. Maitland was standing on the hearth-rug with his 
back to him. Above the mantel-piece was a fine engrav- 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


149 


in g of Delaroche’s picture of the Agony of Gethsemane — 
a picture forever afterward associated in Everard’s mind 
with that solemn moment in his life. The kneeling 
figure, awful in suffering, trembling before an anguish 
beyond human strength to endure, touched him with a 
new significance; the cup which human nature dared not 
grasp, but which divine love resolved to drain to the 
lees, suddenly, he knew not how, symbolized his life; the 
terrible struggle between spirit and flesh became his. All 
in one flash these feelings passed through him, for, as 
soon as the door closed behind him, Mr. Maitland turned 
and looked at him. 

“ What is it?” cried Henry, in low choked tones. 

Ten years had apparently been added to the gentle 
priest’s age, and his haggard and careworn air empha- 
sized his likeness to Cyril. But it was the look in his 
eyes which sent all the blood rushing thickly to Everard’s 
heart, such a look of fiery anger and indignation as seemed 
utterly inconsistent with his kindly affectionate nature, a 
hurt look, a look of unendurable anguish. Once before, 
and only once, Henry had seen that look, and now all the 
years rolled back, and he saw the painful scene it recalled 
with vivid intensity. It was the only time Mr. Maitland 
had ever thrashed Cyril, an epoch in the children’s 
lives. 

Some choice fruit had been set aside for a dying parish- 
ioner, who chanced to have been Ben Lee’s first wife, and 
Cyril, not knowing it was intended for any special pur- 
pose, and being unluckily alone in the dining-room with 
it, had yielded to a temptation he never could resist, and 
had eaten first one cool juicy fruit, and then another, 
until the dish was empty. In a boy of ten it was not a 
grave fault, and, remorse having seized the child just as 
the last peach vanished, he made up his mind to go 
and confess, and receive some light punishment or per- 
haps only a rebuke. But just then inquiry was made 
for the missing fruit, its intended destination was 
announced in his hearing, and both father and mother 
were much annoyed at its disappearance. 

All the household was interrogated, % and expressed 
ignorance of the matter: and a servant having called 
attention to Cyril’s proximity to the temptation, he was 
specially questioned, but denied in the calmest way having 


150 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


even seen such a thing as a nectarine. Later, when the 
mysterious disappearance was being discussed, Cyril 
expressed virtuous indignation against the greedy thief, 
and at the same moment taking out his handkerchief, 
he let fall a peach-stone, and, on being searched, a 
whole handful of fruit-stones was discovered in his 
pocket. 

It was then that Everard saw that fiery look in Mr. 
Maitland's kindly eyes. He well remembered listening 
with the sobbing Lilian in the hall, and hearing the rod 
in its unsparing descent on the culprit's back, and the 
pale anguish of Cyril's face when he left the study, 
shamed and tearless, to throw himself into Lilian's arms 
and tell her that he wished he had never been born. 
Later in the evening, he found the children crouched 
together in each other's arms, crying; and then Cyril 
told them how he had lied from fear, not so much of 
punishment as of the public disgrace of having robbed 
the sick. He never could endure to be thought ill of, 
and now Henry saw the same look of agony and anger in 
Mr. Maitland's face, and could only ask, “What is 
it?" 

“ Henry," the old man replied, in those fuller tones 
which resembled Cyril's and which nothing but intense 
feeling could produce in him, “ I have loved you as a 
son." 

“ Sir," replied Henry, “you have always treated me as 
one. This house has been my home." 

“ I have been proud of you, Henry; I have valued your 
intellect and respected your moral worth." 

A terrible foreboding of what was coming shot through 
Everard's brain. He sank into a chair, and turned white 
to the lips. Mr. Maitland remained standing, with the 
same dreadful gaze fixed upon Henry, and the sublime 
sorrow of Gethsemane pictured above his head. 

“You must know what I have to say to you," he con- 
tinued. “ Do not I beseech you, do not pain me by 
obliging me to tell you in so many words." 

“I do not know what you have to say to me," replied 
Everard, in a faint voice. 

“You lie!" cried Mr. Maitland. 

“ Sir! " exclaimed Everard, starting to his feet. 

“ That you should bring disgrace upon the roof which 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


151 


sheltered you ! ” continued Mr. Maitland, looking in his 
passion more and more like Cyril. 

“ Sir,” said Henry, with cold, hurt pride, “you pre- 
sume upon your privilege as an older man and a clergy- 
man. You have no right to insult me in this unwarrant- 
able manner. I will try not to forget that you have been 
a father to me, when my own father was unable to see 
much of me, and that Mrs. Maitland — I had no mother 
» 

“Thank God for that!” remarked Mr. Maitland. 
“Oh, Henry, what awful hypocrisy is yours! When I 
think of all you said about that unhappy girl! When 1 
remember the wrong we all, even his own father, did to 
Ingram Swaynestone! ” 

“ What can you mean? ” ejaculated Henry, turning 
red, and then white. 

“ Your own conscience must supply the answer, Henry. 
You know how you passed yesterday afternoon; you know 
that you returned with red hands and a bruised face to 
my table, to my hearth. You may yet, if you care to 
escape by the kitchen door, elude the vigilance of the 
police. But I do not advise you to do so. I advise you 
to surrender as quietly as possible, and I ask you for the 
sake of ancient kindness between us, to bring as little 
scandal on this roof as possible. I will go to your poor 
father myself, and break the matter to him as soon as you 
are gone. In the mean time the police — ” 

Henry burst into a laugh — a loud, harsh, dreadful 
laugh, that penetrated into the drawing-room, and 
startled Lilian and her mother. “The police! ” he cried; 
“what have they to do with me?” 

“ They bring a warrant to arrest you on the charge of 
wilful murder.” 

“ This is nonsense! ” cried Henry. “ Mr. Maitland, you 
cannot take the matter seriously; you must know that 
there is some absurd mistake.” 

“ God help us all!” he replied, bursting into tears, “I 
wish I did! But the evidence against you is too clear.” 

Henry sat down once more, and tried to collect his 
startled thoughts, and resist the strange certainty which 
possessed him that the knell of his life was already toll- 
ing. He lifted his eyes involuntarily, and once more they 
rested upon the agony which was beyond even sinless 


152 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


human strength. In his own frame he felt the strong 
shudder which convulses the kneeling figure before the 
terrible, inevitable cup; a deep and solemn calm came 
upon him, and he began to think more clearly, while the 
fierce resentment that Mr. Maitland’s unjust suspicion 
kindled in him died away into pain. 

“You will break it gently to my father?” he said, 
quietly, after a pause. “ Tell him it is a mistake, which 
a few words will probably set right.” 

“Your poor father! And Cyril, my poor Cyril; it will 
be a cruel blow to him!” 

“I hope that — Lilian — and Mrs. Maitland — I trust 
they know nothing of this? If they could in any way, be 
prevented from knowing the object of these men’s pres- 
ence,” continued Henry, when he was interrupted by a 
knock at the door. 

It was Eliza, with the inspector and two policemen 
behind her. 

“Come in,” said Everard; and they entered and for- 
mally arrested him. 

“And the quieter you go the better, sir,” observed the 
inspector. “ The fly is waiting just outside the gate in 
the road.” 

“Must I go through the hall?” asked Everard. 

“ I fear there is no other course,” returned Mr. Mait- 
land. 

“ I will just go and account for my sudden departure 
to the ladies,” said Everard; but the inspector, who had 
taken certain steel implements from his pocket, while 
one of the men stood before the door, here informed him 
that he could not go without his escort and those same 
glittering ornaments, which he proceeded to adjust to 
Henry’s wrists with the dexterity of long practice. 

Like one in a dream, Henry submitted to this igno- 
miny, and saw Mr. Maitland step across the hall and 
carefully close the drawing-room door, while Eliza fetched 
his hat and coat; and thus, without any farewell, he 
walked out of the familiar doors, observing as he went 
the three troubled pets, the dogs giving vent to occa- 
sional reproachful growls, and the cat stalking uneasily 
about, and uttering a plaintive mew as he passed him; 
and he felt the unaccustomed touch of steel on his wrists, 
and half wondered at the strange proximity of the police- 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 153 

men on either side of him. As he stepped out on the 
graveled drive, he was startled to see a little figure with 
a white face spring forward and leap to his arms. It was 
poor little Winnie. He bent down and kissed her. 

“ Don't be frightened, darling; I shall soon be back. 
It is only a mistake,” he said, touched by this incident, 
and Mark Antony's sympathetic mew; “ tell Lilian it is 
a mistake.” 

He could see Lilian through the side of the bay-window 
of the drawing-room. Her face was turned from him, 
and she was tranquilly reading the morning paper, which 
did not reach sequestered Malbourne till that late hour; 
nevertheless, he was glad when he was outside the gate, 
and safely hidden from her sight in the fly. 

The village was full of life; the whole population had 
apparently turned out, open-mouthed and interjectional, 
to see and discuss the extraordinary proceeding. On a 
little patch of green Everard saw Lennie, with his jacket 
off, engaged in fighting with Dickie Stevens, who was 
apparently getting the worst of it, and was, indeed, 
finally vanquished after a severe battle. The unlucky 
Dickie had alluded in plain and unvarnished terms to the 
end which probably awaited Dr. Everard in consequence 
of his imputed crime; hence the battle. 

The forge was blazing away, but the clink of the ham- 
mer was unheard. Straun had left his iron half-shaped 
on the anvil, and stood outside, bare-armed and grimy, 
ready to pull off his brown paper cap when the fly passed; 
and G-ranfer leaned against the sill of the opened window, 
with a countenance expressive of the deepest wisdom, and 
shook his head ominously. It was not for a man of his 
knowledge and sagacity to betray surprise; he had evi- 
dently foreseen and predicted the event, and knew more 
about its probable termination than it was prudent to 
reveal. The usual village parliament was grouped around 
him, with its hands chiefly in its pockets, and its coun- 
tenance distraught; but no cap was lifted when the fly 
passed save Straun's. That and a courtesy from a little 
girl, and a slow and solemn salute from Tom Hale, who 
was drawn up at the corner of the wheelwright's yard 
with a stiffness and precision which suggested the pres- 
ence of the whole British army, alone greeted the fallen 
man. 


154 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


The news of Lee’s death did not reach Woodlands till 
the afternoon, when it was bruited about among the ser- 
vants, one of whom had caught various strange rumors in 
Oldport. It floated up to the drawing-room, where it 
aroused but a tepid interest, save in Marion. Cyril 
agreed with her that it was very sad and shocking, but 
expressed little surprise, or, indeed, interest. 

He was very restless, and, as the afternoon wore on, 
left Marion, and wandered aimlessly about, in spite of the 
fatigue and illness of which he complained. Every 
sound startled him, and he kept looking expectantly 
toward the gates, till about four o’clock, when the noise 
of wheels caught his tense hearing, and he saw his father 
drive up to the door in the little pony-chaise. He made 
one step forward to meet him, and then he went back, 
and, passing behind some laurels, which effectually 
screened him, went toward the back of the house, and 
paced up and down on a terrace, which commanded a 
View of the gray sea, turning his head constantly toward 
the house, whence he expected a summons. 

Some ten minutes passed, and no one sought him. To 
Cyril it was an eternity. His nervous agitation became 
unbearable; he was consumed with inward fever. Noth- 
ing was heard in the chill winter afternoon, save the 
heavy boom of the groundswell, which filled all the air 
with a sullen, steady roar, a roar which confused CyriFs 
senses with its unceasing thunder, and seemed full of 
menace to him. The sea, which was about half a mile 
from the grounds, was coldly gray, and looked, with its 
calm breadth of unruffled surface, like a sheet of steel. 
The sky also was steely gray, save in the west, where the 
departed sun had left some pearl and opal gleams in the 
cloud-rifts; there was no wind, and the frost still held. 
Cyril bared his hot forehead to the still winter air, and 
some broken words of prayer escaped him. 

“ I would have atoned,” he murmured — “ I would have 
atoned at any price, but it was not possible; the wrong is 
irreparable. Take Thou the will and the broken heart 
of contrition.” 

Then some sound smote upon his hearing above the 
august thunder of the unquiet sea, and he replaced his 
hat and turned toward the house. But no one came 
forth, and the sea went on booming heavily as before, 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


155 


only, to Cyril’s vexed spirit, it seemed that its hoarse roar 
rose to a deafening intensity, like the trouble in his 
breast. 

“If it were but over!” he murmured. “I cannot 
endure this suspense; ” and he turned, half staggering, 
and entered the conservatory, where he was still alone. 
He felt very ill, and wondered if some deadly sickness 
were about to fall on him. Body and mind alike seemed 
failing under the heavy burden he bore. He leant his 
elbows on the bench and supported his head on his hands, 
gazing through some bright flowers out on the pitiless 
sea, and sighed out that he could not bear it, that he 
wished all were over, and himself at rest from the dread- 
ful stress of life. 

A sharp pruning-knife lay near him; his eye rested 
longingly upon it, and he thought how easily it would 
still the terrible tumult within. Ho pain; only a pin- 
prick, as it were — he knew exactly where to strike; 
Everard showed him one day when they were discussing 
the subject — then a bright, warm jet of blood; a growing 
languor, deepening into an eternal sleep. He put forth 
his hand and touched the knife, even felt its edge, and 
then dropped it with a shudder, and betook himself to 
prayer. And in his prayer he vowed a passionate vow, 
were he once delivered from this impending terror, to con- 
secrate his life anew to his great and sacred calling, and 
to devote body, soul, and spirit with unsparing vigor to 
that one supreme cause. Calm fell upon him then, and 
he heard the footsteps of the approaching messenger with 
a serene face. It was only a servant, with a quiet, every- 
day countenance. 

“ The admiral wishes to see you in the library at once, 
sir,” he said. 

The admiral! Cyril turned sick. Why not his own 
father? Was it so bad as that? He walked, however, 
quietly through the darkening house, and entered the 
well-known door of the library with a calm face. A ser- 
vant had just placed a lamp on a table before the fire, the 
ruddy blaze of which danced over the room with fantastic 
cheerfulness. George and Keppel were standing on the 
hearth-rug, asking each other what had happened. Their 
presence steadied Cyril, and conveyed a vague comfort to 
him. 


156 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLANB. 


“ I say, Cyril,” observed Keppel, in bis strong, cheery 
voice, “there's a row of some kind; all hands piped. 
What the deuce is your governor up to?" 

The door of an inner room, the admiral's special sanc- 
tuary, opened, and he came forth, accompanied by Mr. 
Maitland, who was too troubled to exchange any greeting 
with the young men. 

“ Well, my lads," said the admiral, standing with his 
back to the fireplace, and plunging at once into the 
subject, “here's the devil to pay. Maitland says that 
Swaynestone's coachman was murdered last night — " 

“Murdered!" cried Cyril, springing from the chair 
into which he had dropped his weary, aching frame. 

“Murdered!" echoed George and Keppel, in varying 
degrees of horror. 

“ My dear Everard," interposed Mr. Maitland, “you 
are so precipitate. Spare the young men; break it gen- 
tly." 

“Gently! By George, Maitland, murder is murder, 
and a damned ugly thing, however you break it! " retorted 
the honest admiral, who had by no means enjoyed Mr. 
Maitland's kind endeavors to break it gently. “The 
women will have to be told; somebody had better break 
it to them," he added, passing his hand thoughtfully 
over his fresh-colored, weather-beaten face, while Cyril 
shuddered with a sick apprehension. “ It's no use beat- 
ing about the bush, lads," he continued, in his impetuous 
manner; “the long and the short of it is, Henry is 
arrested for murder." 

“ Henry! " cried the three. “By Jove!" added Kep- 
pel; “ My dear father! " added George; while Cyril 
burst into a hysteric laugh. “Nonsense! the thing is 
impossible, absurd, ridiculous. What ass arrested him?" 
he burst out. 

“ Stand by, Cyril. You side with your friend of 
course. Hear the rest. Tell them, Maitland," expostu- 
lated the admiral. 

“ Ho you mean to say, sir, that you think him guilty?" 
asked Keppel, fiercely. 

> “ My dear Keppel," returned Mr. Maitland, “ I would 
give the remainder of my life not to believe it. I have 
passed the whole morning with Sir Lionel and I have 
heard such evidence as places it beyond a doubt." 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


157 


Keppel swore steadily and intensely for some seconds, 
while George quoted scripture at the same rate. Mr. 
Maitland thought that of the two he preferred Keppel’s 
observations. Cyril dropped into an arm-chair, and his 
head sank upon his breast. 

“Steady, lad, steady! ” exclaimed the admiral, 
approaching him. “We must stand to our guns.” 

“ Brandy,” murmured Cyril, faintly. 

“He has been ill,” said Mr. Maitland, apologizing for 
his son's weakness; while the admiral plunged into his 
sanctuary, and issued thence bearing some excellent rum 
in a little glass, and poured it into Cyril's white lips. 

“What the deuce did you mean by swearing before the 
clergy, Keppel?” he asked, while doing this kind office. 

“I am unwell; I have a heavy cold,” gasped Cyril, 
reviving. “It is nonsense about Henry. Where is he?” 

“We must bail him at once,” said Keppel, when he 
heard that his brother was actually in custody at that 
moment; but Mr. Maitland reminded him that this 
course was impossible, while George groaned and observed 
parenthetically that Henry needed a fall to bring him to 
a serious state of mind. 

“Serious!” echoed the admiral. “You may depend 
upon it, the poor beggar feels serious enough. Well, he 
was the only boy I never flogged of you all. He was such 
a little chap when his poor mother — Damnation, 
George! if you spare the rod you spoil the child!” cried 
the poor man, turning aside to dash a couple of tears from 
his eyes. “ The Bible tells you that.” 

“ True, most true,” returned George, conscious of hav- 
ing received a, Benjamin's portion of the paternal rod. 

“ The question is, what is to be done? ” said the prac- 
tical Keppel, who was pacing the library with a wide 
balance of limb, as if the carpet were liable to rise in 
waves and upset him. 

“ Exactly,” returned the admiral, with an air of relief. 
“How can we get him out of this hole, Maitland? We 
must spend all we've got to get him off and save the 
family honor. What's the first step? To London for a 
lawyer? And I sail on the third, and so does Keppel; 
and then Leslie is off to India. By jove! it's the devil's 
own luck; nobody but a parson left to look after the 
family, and I put George into the Church — meaning 


158 THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 

no disrespect, gentlemen — because he was the fool of the 
family.” 

“It is too ridiculous to take this seriously,” said Cyril. 
“ The inquest will, of course, set Henry free. He will 
prove an alibi , or these thick-headed rustics will have 
sufficient sense to bring in a verdict of accidental death. 
What more probable than that Lee — in trouble, and prob- 
ably a little tipsy — should slip in a wood on a dark night 
and fall heavily?” 

“ But,” replied Mr. Maitland, who did not remember 
that Cyril could have heard nothing about a wood, “a 
man cannot drag himself for yards into the underwood 
after receiving a mortal blow on the head.” 

“Who says he was dragged?” asked Cyril, quickly. 

“ There are the marks on the frosted moss and grass. I 
saw them myself,” said his father; and he went on to 
place further evidence before them, while Cyril listened 
with a beating heart and gathering dread. 

“ Good heavens! ” he cried at last, “don't you all see 
that it is morally impossible for a man of Henry’s char- 
acter to commit such a crime? Even if Lee were killed, 
Henry had no hand in it.” 

“ Henry is as honest a fellow as ever stepped, Cyril,” 
said Keppel; “but, you see, women are the very deuce. 
The best of men may be led on to anything, once he gets 
hung up in an affair of that kind.” 

“An excuse as old as Adam's iniquity,” sighed Mr. 
Maitland. 

“ Henry had nothing to do with that miserable busi- 
ness,” cried Cyril ; “I would stake my life on it.” 

“ Stand up for your friend, my lad,” said the admiral. 
“He would be a doctor ; and I won't deny that a surgeon 
is useful after a general engagement ; but then, he would 
not even enter the service. Doctoring is bad for the 
morals ; all this poking and prying into dead bodies is an 
infernal business not fit for a gentleman. Those very 
clever doctors are a bad lot, most of them in league with 
the devil. George said in his last sermon that the 
Almighty sends sickness as a punishment for sin, and it 
is a clear flying in the face of Providence to make people 
healthy.” 

“ My dear father ! ” remonstrated George, who was not 
prepared for such an application of his sermon, flattering 
though it were. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


159 


“ Yes, yes, you said so in the pulpit, and you are not in 
the pulpit now,” proceeded the admiral, with a fine dis- 
tinction between the preacher and the man. “ Now for 
action, lads. When does this damned thing take place, 
Maitland?” 

“ The inquest will be held to-morrow, admiral ; but the 
verdict may not be given for some days. In the mean 
time, we must try to get all the evidence in Henry’s favor 
that we can. Lilian saw him return, but refuses to swear 
to it. She actually disbelieves the evidence of her 
senses.” 

“ Poor Lilian,” murmured Cyril, with a kind of sob. 

“ Oh, the women ! ” groaned the admiral. “ George, 
go and break it ; it is parson’s work. Poor little Marion ! 
you had better tackle her, Cyril.” 

f ‘ A solicitor must be procured to watch the case on 
Henry’s behalf at the inquest,” said Mr. Maitland. “ I 
suppose Weston would be the man; he is your man of 
business, I think.” 

“ Just so,” replied the admiral, instantly ringing the 
bell to order a carriage. “I’ll go at once. By George! 
I had forgotten the dance. Half the county will be here 
in a couple of hours.” 

The consultation was at an end, and the meeting broke 
up, and Cyril, with a strange feeling of relief, went to 
Marion and told her what had occurred, while George did 
the same with the other ladies, who somehow had the 
tidings conveyed to the people staying in the house. 

Breaking the news to Marion was not all pain; in fact, 
it brought a wonderful solace to Cyril’s troubled soul. 
He spent the evening alone with her, and so exerted him- 
self to convince her of her brother’s perfect innocence 
and probable speedy release, that he went to bed with a 
lightened heart, and slept as no one else slept that night 
beneath the admiral’s roof, the sleep of exhaustion, 
dreamless and perfect as that of an infant. 


160 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

In those days of unutterable amazement, Everard 
began to doubt his own identity. On the first day of the 
inquest he received an affectionate letter from Cyril, 
treating the affair of his imprisonment as a mistake, 
which a brief investigation would speedily clear up. 

Then came the succession of surprises which the in- 
quest brought, as witness after witness came forward and 
swore to actions of his which he had never so much as 
contemplated in imagination. 

After the evidence of those who discovered poor Lee, 
and that of the surgeon, Mrs. Lee was the first witness. 
She last saw her husband alive at dinner-time, after 
which he 16ft her to return to the stables, she said. She 
left the Temple for Malbourne soon after three, and on 
returning through the fields at about a quarter to five, 
she saw Dr. Everard spring over a hurdle leading into the 
fatal copse, and walk hurriedly along toward Malbourne. 
Although the moon was but just risen, she made him out 
distinctly by his gray suit. He had no stick in his hand, 
and, though he passed within half a dozen yards, did not 
appear to see her, and took no notice of her salutation. 
Her husband was a steady and sober man, but had of late 
been much depressed on account of family troubles, had 
been especially vexed at dinner-time, and had eaten little. 
When asked what had distressed Lee, she replied that he 
had some difference with his daughter, whom he had 
discovered with Dr. Everard at mid-day. 

Sir Lionel Swaynestone stated that he had last seen Lee 
at eleven in the forenoon; had known him all his life as 
a sober and industrious man and good servant. 

Judkins described the hour and manner of his finding 
Lee’s body. He had last seen him alive at three o’clock; 
when Lee told him that Dr. Everard would be somewhere 
near the Temple that afternoon, and that he intended, if 
possible, to meet him, and threaten him with exposure 
unless he consented to repair the wrong he had done his 
child. 

Everard’s solicitor here interposed to ask the nature of 
that wrong, and Lee’s grounds for suspecting Everard of 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


161 


it, when, to his own deep amazement, as well as Eve- 
rard's, he was told that Everard and Alma had been seen 
together in the copse by both Lee and Judkins on the 
very morning of Lee's death; and, further, that he, Jud- 
kins, had witnessed several clandestine meetings between 
them during Mrs. Lee's illness in the spring. In the sub- 
sequent trial before the magistrates, Judkins further 
witnessed to meetings at specified times, and to gifts 
of flowers, exchanged between Everard and Alma. A 
book of poems, found in Everard's room at the Rectory, 
was produced, inscribed, “ For Alma Lee, with best New 
Year's wishes, from H. E." Judkins also swore that 
letters had passed between them. 

The solicitor having asked Judkins if Lee had not 
threatened violence toward Everard, he replied that he 
only threatened to assault the prisoner in case he refused 
to do justice to his daughter. 

Judkins further deposed that, on returning from the 
downs with some horses he had been exercising at a little 
after four on the fatal afternoon, he had seen the pris- 
oner enter the copse. On being subsequently asked by 
Everard how he had missed Mr. Swaynestone, who was 
riding toward the downs at the same time, he replied that 
he had drawn up for some minutes behind a screen of 
hazels, while Mr. Swaynestone was passing in the open. 
He did not until the Assize trial add that he did this to 
watch the meeting of the gray figure with Alma. 

John Nobbs, a stable-help, deposed to parting with 
Lee on the high-road outside the gate at three o'clock; 
the witness was starting for Oldport on foot, Lee walked 
up the meadow toward his home. Lee carried no stick, 
and was quite sober. 

Several Swaynestone servants witnessed having seen 
Lee about the place before three o'clock; after which 
hour no one appeared to have seen him alive. 

Ingram Swaynestone bore witness to Lee's character; 
he saw him last alive at the stables at two o'clock. At 
twenty minutes past four, or thereabouts, Ingram rode 
across the meadow in which the Temple stood, at a can- 
ter, on his way across the downs to Shotover, when he 
saw Everard walking quickly along a hedgerow in the 
direction of Temple Copse. He was dressed in gray, 
carried a stick, and made no reply to Swaynestone's 
11 


162 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


shouted greeting, beyond a wave of his hand. On return- 
ing through Malbourne, at ten minutes to five, Swayne- 
stone again saw Everard walking in the moonlight across 
the field, at the corner of which the Malbourne sign-post 
stood. He reined in his horse, and called out to him; 
but Everard went hurriedly on, not appearing to see or 
hear him. The road was some fifty yards from the path 
Everard was pursuing, and the field was higher than the 
road. 

William Grove had seen Everard at the same place and 
time. He expressed wonder to Jim, his mate, that Dr. 
Everard, at the sound of the wagon-bells — since he was 
then returning from Oldport with his team — and his own 
“ Good night, doctor,” did not come to receive a parcel 
the wagoner was bringing him from Oldport, and respect- 
ing the instant delivery of which he had been most 
solicitous. All this Jim Downer corroborated. 

Stevens, the sexton, said that about sunset, or later, he 
was in the churchyard, and saw a figure in a gray suit, 
which he recognized as Dr. Everard’s, leave the back 
premises of the Rectory, and ascend the hill in the direc- 
tion of Swaynestone. He carried a stick. 

Straun, the blacksmith, on the other hand, swore that 
he saw Everard pass through the village street by the 
forge at that hour, or a little before. He was uncertain 
about his clothes, but swore to the stick. 

A Swaynestone keeper saw Everard a little later in a 
plantation on the upland. He described his gray suit and 
stick ; he was not near enough to speak to him. A 
shepherd, cutting turnips in a field near, swore that 
Everard passed him at four o’clock, and stopped a 
moment to chat with him. He was not sure about his 
clothes ; thought they were gray. Everard had a stick, 
also some very good tobacco, of which he gave him some. 
He told the shepherd that he was going across the downs 
to Widow Dove’s. Dr. Everard wondered that two lone 
women should live up there in the solitary cottage, he said. 

Eliza the parlor-maid, bore witness that Everard was at 
the Rectory between three and four; he was in the draw- 
ing room with her mistress when she showed some visit- 
ors in. She saw him no more till about five, when he 
entered softly and hurriedly by the back door, and ran 
across the back hall in the dusk. Miss Maitland was 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


163 


leaving the kitchen at that time, and also saw Dr. Ever- 
ard, whose figure was clearly shown by the light issuing 
from the kitchen. Miss Maitland called to him, “ Henry, 
was Mrs. Dove at home?” but he made no answer, ran 
upstairs, and locked himself in. The cook also saw Dr. 
Everard at that hour, and heard Miss Maitland speak to 
him. Miss Maitland was rebuking the witness for not 
having lighted the hall lamp. Eliza next saw Everard 
an hour later. He came into the kitchen with his 
hand to his face, and asked the cook for some raw 
meat to save him from a black eye. Martha, the 
housemaid, said, “ Oh, sir, what an eye you will 
have!” He replied, “I hope not; there is nothing 
like raw meat.” Cook laughed, and said, “One would 
think you had been in the wars, sir. Have you had a 
fall?” He seemed confused, and said, “I don't know. 
At least, I ran up against a tree in the dark.” At 
dinner, he told Mr. Maitland that he knocked his face 
against a door, and made signs to Miss Winnie not to 
tell. When he came into the kitchen, Eliza heard him 
say something to Miss Winnie about not telling. He 
seemed excited and confused at dinner. This evidence 
of Eliza's, given briefly at the inquest, only came out in 
full at the trial in Oldport Town Hall, when it was cor- 
roborated by the other maids. 

G-ranfer was produced on the second day of the inquiry, 
and, with an irrepressible circumlocution which nearly 
drove the jury beside themselves, witnessed meeting 
Henry at the wheelwright's corner at five o'clock; he was 
inclined to believe that he wore the fatal gray suit, since 
he and Straun and several others had seen and com- 
mented on it in the forenoon. 

What bewildered Everard most was the evidence of 
things against him. The housemaid witnessed with 
tears, to finding bloody water in his hand-basin, and see- 
ing the garments hanging to dry. The suit was pro- 
duced, and bore other stains, which Henry had not 
observed by candle-light. He saw stains of earth, as well 
as those darker marks; bits of moss and dead leaves 
caught in the rough woollen material; the badly sponged 
spot he had seen at mid-day; and, more surprising still, a 
slight rent at the arm-hole, as if the sleeve had been torn 
in a struggle. 


164 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 




Buried among dead leaves and moss, the police found a 
handkerchief of Everard's, bearing the ominous crimson 
stains. Further off, among thick holly-bushes, they 
found a stick, which the doctor said might have dealt the 
fatal blow. Mr. Maitland identified the stick — a thick 
bamboo, with a loaded top — as his property. It remained 
usually in the hall, and was used by the family generally. 
Everard had taken it in the forenoon on his walk with 
the twins, as many people could witness. In Lee's pocket 
they found the two halves of the letter Alma had dropped 
in the forenoon. It was written on good note-paper, from 
the top of which an embossed heading had been hastily 
torn, so hastily that some of the end letters remained 
thus: or rn E . Similar paper was taken from a blotting-case 
used chiefly by visitors with the full address, “The Bec- 
tory, Malbourne.'' The handwriting, evidently feigned, 
was afterward submitted to an expert, and compared with 
various specimens of Everard's writing. 

Lee's watch, purse, etc., were found upon him; and, 
what puzzled Everard strangely, a leather bag containing 
fifty pounds in gold, which had been stamped upon by a 
heavy foot, was found on the hard path some yards from 
the body. It was impossible to identify this, as it had no 
marks, and was one of those commonly used by bankers 
to serve their customers with gold; it was evidently, from 
its dull gray color, an old one, which had passed through 
many hands. At the subsequent trial it was suggested 
that this money, so carefully arranged to defy indentifi- 
cation, had been offered to Lee as the price of his silence, 
and by him indignantly rejected, and had been forgotten 
by the criminal in his agitation after the deed. 

Everard's own statement was simple enough. He 
could merely say that, wearing the clothes in which he 
then stood, a prisoner, he had left the Bectory about sun- 
down — the exact hour he had not observed — and, passing 
through the village, where he exchanged a brief saluta- 
tion with Straun, who was standing alone outside the 
forge, which was closed for the night, had walked 
through the fields as far as the fatal copse. There he 
had turned off and struck across the down to the solitary 
cottage known far and near as Widow Dove's. He 
remembered meeting no one save the shepherd, but had 
seen a man exercising two horses in the distance when on 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


165 


the open down. He was not near enough to recognize 
the rider, but concluded that he was a groom from 
Swaynestone or Northover. 

He found the widow's hut empty, with no smoke 
issuing from the chimnej^, and no light in either window, 
and returned by a different path, which he described, 
meeting no human being till he descended into the high- 
road at Malbourne Cross, and spoke to Granfer (whose 
legal designation was Isaac Hale, by the way) ; he did not 
remember what he said at this interview, save that he 
asked if Long's bell-team had passed. Going on in the 
dark to Long's farm, which was approached by a by-road 
at right angles to the highway, he found a little girl sit- 
ting on the doorstep of Grove's cottage, which was just 
outside the farm gate, and learned from her that Grove 
was gone to the Rectory with a parcel. 

His return at six, his romp with ’Winnie, and its con- 
sequences, he described ; and, although cautioned that 
what he said would be put in evidence against him, 
deposed to finding blood on his clothes, and sponging it 
away, but expressed himself unable to account for its 
presence. He had never quarreled with Lee, whom he 
had known and respected all his life. He had last seen 
him alive on Sunday in church, and had last spoken to 
him on the previous Saturday. He was too indignant at 
the imputation respecting Alma to deny it, but he denied 
having met her on the 31st, admitting that he was in the 
copse at the alleged hour, but saying nothing about 
Lilian being with him, since he could not endure the idea 
of dragging her name into such associations. He heard of 
Lee's death first on the morning of Hew Year's day. 

He almost smiled when, at the close of the wearisome 
inquiry, the jury returned a verdict of wilful murder 
against him. 

Admiral Everard and Keppel received the intelligence 
by telegram just as the squadron was leaving Spithead. 
Leslie was already on his way to India, and so heard 
nothing. 

The trial before the magistrates seemed to Everard 
but a weary repetition of the inquest nightmare. 

The same witnesses appeared with the same evidence in 
fuller detail. The surgeon, a Dr. Eastbrook, who had 
attended the Swaynestone people ever since he began to 


166 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


practice, confirmed the evidence touching Lee’s good 
health and regular and^abstemious habits, and was borne 
out by a second surgeon, who had assisted him in a post- 
mortem examination. Both surgeons witnessed to contu- 
sions and other signs of struggle; they were unanimous in 
ascribing the death to a blow not self-inflicted, and both 
were of opinion that Lee’s assailant must have been a 
man of considerable muscular power, Lee himself being a 
powerful man scarcely past the prime of life. In cross- 
examination, they admitted that a knowledge of anatomy 
would indicate the part behind the ear as one for a fatal 
blow. Poor Mr. Maitland gave evidence to Henry’s spot- 
less character, and was much dismayed at finding himself 
led into giving damaging statements of Everard’s ex- 
treme eagerness to attend Mrs. Lee in the previous spring, 
and his frequent visits to the Temple. He was equally 
dismayed at the damaging effect of his evidence touching 
Everard’s demeanor at dinner with regard to the black 
eye. Granfer also contrived to effect a little more mis- 
chief in the town hall. 

Granfer was disgusted to observe that Sir Lionel, who 
was a witness, was not on the bench, and that a mere lad 
of some forty summers, a pompous man of commercial 
extraction, for whom the old aristocrat had the heartiest 
contempt, played the leading part on that august emi- 
nence. He therefore put on his most stolid look, and 
acted as if extremely hard of hearing as well as compre- 
hension, and contrived to impress Mr. Browne-Stockham 
with the idea that he was past giving evidence. The 
magistrate, moreover, was fully impressed with a convic- 
tion of Everard’s guilt, which impression he had derived 
from Sir Lionel, who was furious with indignation at the 
guilt and hypocrisy which had brought about the tragedy, 
and had made him accuse and suspect his own son amid 
all kinds of domestic discord, and was disposed to believe 
anything of the man who sat at his board one day and 
killed his beloved and trusted servant the next. Mr. 
Browne-Stockham, therefore, after many vain attempts, 
succeeded in getting Granfer, whose mental impenetrabil- 
ity caused innumerable titters in the court, to reply to 
his question if he understood the nature of an oath. 

(( A oath,” returned Granfer at last, with an air of 
matchless vacuity, “ a oath,” he repeated in his slow 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


167 


way, as he scratched his head and slowly looked round 
the court — “ ay, I hreckon I understand the nature of 
they. I’ve a-yeerd more oaths in a hour than you could 
swear in a day. Ay,” he continued, after a pause, during 
which an explosion of laughter from the court was 
angrily subdued, and looking more helplessly vacant 
than ever, “ my master was the sweariest man you ever 
see. I’ve a-yeerd more oaths than you’ve got zuvverins 
avore you was barned — or thought on, for that matter,” 
he added, with a sudden gleam of inane self-complacency 
in the eyes directed upon the indignant magistrate, who 
muttered that the old fool was in his dotage, while the 
court again exploded with laughter, as courts so easily 
do. 

“ Do you know,” Mr. Browne-Stockham asked, in his 
most pompous manner, when order was once more 
restored, “ in whose presence you stand? ” 

Granfer once more looked round in his slow way, with 
an expression half-way between an owl and an idiot, and 
replied, without the faintest quiver of a facial muscle, “ I 
ain’t a zeen none of ’em avore, as I knows on; athout,” 
he added, brightening up suddenly, “ athout it’s Sir Lio- 
nel. I knows he well enough. Knowed his vather avore 
’un. Vine vigure of a man he was.” 

Here Granfer’s evidence was lost in such a roar that 
the magistrate was driven to the verge of frenzy, and 
threatened to clear the court. Finally, Isaac Hale, aged 
ninety-six, was duly sworn, and was rather severely 
handled while giving his evidence as to his meeting Ever- 
ard at five o’clock, the very hour at which the maids 
swore to his return by the back way to the Rectory. 

Everard had given him a shilling to drink his health 
with, he said, and had further bestowed some tobacco 
upon him. For the consideration of a shilling, it was 
suggested, an aged rustic might well make a mistake as 
to the exact hour of meeting a friend on the highway. 
Mr. Browne-Stockham, moreover, was convinced, from 
Granfer’s Brutus-like affectation of imbecility later on, 
that the old man was in collusion with the accused. 

Mrs. Lee and Judkins both bore witness to the exchange 
of high words between Everard and Lee at their chance 
meeting on the Saturday, Lee having gone home in great 
excitement, and told them that he had forbidden Ever- 


168 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


ard his house. Cyril was summoned to confirm these 
statements. There was no quarrel,, Cyril said on his oath, 
but Lee seemed annoyed, neither of them knew why, and 
forbade Everard his house; they supposed him to be 
under the influence of drink. 

Here the counsel for the prosecution took Cyril up 
sharply, and asked what grounds he had for such a sup- 
position with regard to a man whose sobriety was well 
known ; and, altogether, Cyril's evidence was severely 
tested and reduced to powder. He sat down with the 
despairing conviction that he had done Everard as much 
damage as possible. 

Lilian's evidence, however, had a worse effect even than 
his. She had tried to avoid admitting her glimpse of the 
gray figure at dusk, but in vain. The maid swore that 
she had both seen and spoken to the supposed Everard, 
and she was placed in the cruel position of having to 
swear for or against an apparition, which she believed to 
be some trick of the senses and imagination and which 
she could in honest truth neither affirm nor deny. 
Placed in the witness-box, she could only say that she 
thought she saw a gray figure flit by in the dusk, and 
that she spoke under the impression that it was Dr. 
Everard, but believed herself to have been mistaken. 
Pressed for a reason for doubting his identity, she could 
only give his silence when spoken to, and his subsequent 
denial at dinner of having come in at that hour, and it 
required no very keen intelligence to discover that Lilian 
wished to disbelieve in the apparition. She volunteered 
evidence as to the alleged meeting with Alma at mid-day, 
stating that she was with Everard the whole time, and 
that they had seen no human being beside themselves. 

It did not follow from this, as was observed, that Alma 
was not there, as Mrs. Lee and Judkins had sworn, or 
that Everard had not intended to meet her at that hour, 
had he been able to be alone. Alma was not in a condi- 
tion even to make a deposition on her bed of sickness, 
since she continued more or less delirious for some weeks 
after her father's death; but her evidence was not deemed 
of sufficient consequence to justify a postponement of the 
trial, which, after a quantity of evidence which it would 
be tedious to detail, ended in a repetition of the coroner’s 
verdict; and Henry, doubting whether there were any 


THE SILENCE OF LEAN MAITLAND. 


169 


longer a solid earth to stand on or a just Heaven to 
appeal to, found himself committed for trial at the next 
assizes on the capital charge. 


CHAPTER XV. 

Cyrii/s direst anticipations had not reached a capital 
conviction, though he had feared manslaughter, and even 
Sir Lionel Swaynestone had his doubts as to the justice of 
the graver charge. Oldport public opinion, which was 
naturally stirred to its depths, was divided between the 
two ; of the accused’s innocence it had not the slightest 
suspicion. The little town was Liberal, not to say Radi- 
cal, in its politics, and disposed to think the worst of a 
gentleman in his dealings with those beneath him. 

Few people had a good word for a medical man of good 
birth, who was said to have taken advantage of both rank 
and profession to work such cruel harm as that imputed 
to Everard. The medical profession, strangely enough, 
has never been popular, skill in the healing art being 
usually attributed by the unlearned to the favor* of the 
Evil One : a clever physician is prized and feared, but 
rarely loved. Even among the cultured there still lingers 
a faint repulsion for the man who is the only welcome 
guest in the day of sickness and peril, and society is only 
just beginning to honor the cultivated intellect and recog- 
nize the social value of the doctor. 

The case of William Palmer, the notorious poisoner, 
was then fresh in peopled minds, and the ease and 
impunity with which a skilful physician can become a 
murderer had awakened something of the old supersti- 
tious horror of the doctor’s occult knowledge in the pub- 
lic imagination. Browne-Stockham and his colleague, a 
retired merchant of limited intellect and still more lim- 
ited knowledge, and whose birth and liberal politics 
prejudiced him against Everard as a scion of a good old 
Tory family, were both strongly prepossessed against the 
innocence of a doctor who had manifested such unac- 
countable eagerness to get a footing in a humble family 
under pretence of exercising his skill. Dr. Eastbrook 


170 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


had been ready and willing to attend Mrs. Lee as usual in 
the preceding spring, as his evidence stated; Dr. Everard 
had asked leave to attend with him, because it was an 
unusual and very interesting case, a thing neither magis- 
trates nor coroner’s jury could understand. 

Dr. Eastbrook, an older man, and too busy to be very 
eager about unusual cases, was not sorry to have Everard’s 
help, since the case required more frequent visits than he 
could conveniently give, and finally he gave up the case 
to him altogether. This the public mind could conceive; 
but Everard’s great eagerness and assiduous watching of 
the sick woman, needed some motive to account for it. 
What motive could there be save that sinister one of see- 
ing Alma constantly and alone? Thus many prejudices 
gathered together to precipitate Everard’s doom, and 
although the prejudice of class was not so strong against 
him before the judge and jury at the assizes, yet there 
his profession exposed him to as great disfavor. 

Everard once discussed with Cyril the subject of the 
doctor’s small popularity as compared with the clergy- 
man’s, and Cyril accounted for it partly by the usefulness 
of the surgeon. “ Clergymen,” he observed in one of 
those bursts of ingenuous satire that delighted Everard, 
“are of no use save at two or three august moments of 
life — when a man dies, gets married, or is born — therefore 
they inspire popular reverence as belonging to the orna- 
mental and superfluous portion of existence — its fringes, 
so to speak. Doctors, on the contrary, cannot be dis- 
pensed with; their services are needed and obtained on 
the most homely occasions, and men never reverence the 
indispensable. Bread and cheese is taken as a matter of 
course, but' the champagne of festivals is thought much 
of.” 

Cyril often affected a cynicism which amused Everard 
the more from its contrast with his supposed character. 

It was difficult to move through the dense crowd which 
gathered round the Oldport Town Hall when Everard 
issued from it at the conclusion of the magistrates’ in- 
quiry, and public opinion expressed itself in hisses and 
groans as the vehicle in which he was being conveyed 
moved slowly, and not without some effort on the part of 
the guard of police, through the square. 

Not every day was there such an exciting event as a 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. m 

trial for murder in the town hall, nor was it often 
that a culprit of such high social standing appeared in 
the well known dock. The little town wore quite a 
festal air. Street-musicians and barrows laden with nuts, 
oranges, and ginger-beer drove a thriving trade; and 
there was not a bar at public house or hotel in the place 
which did not receive an access of custom during the 
inquiry. Nothing else was talked of, and the experience 
of ages has shown that when mankind talk they must 
drink something more inspiriting than water; also that 
when they drink that something they invariably talk in 
proportion to its inspiriting qualities. Tea-tables are 
supposed to be the great centres of gossip, and their 
female devotees its high priestesses. This is a popular 
fallacy. The ladies bear their part valiantly, but they 
cannot match the men. From the West End club down 
to the humblest public house, male coteries are the great 
sources of social information, which arrives in a weak- 
ened second-hand form at the female tea-board, where, 
indeed, it is frequently robbed for obvious reasons of its 
most racy characteristics. 

On the evening after the termination of the great mur- 
der case, the pleasant bow-windowed room behind the 
bar at Burton's Hotel, which, as everybody knows, is 
opposite the town hall, was occupied not only by its 
nightly frequenters, but also by many less familiar 
guests, who dropped in ostensibly for a cigar and brandy 
or pale ale for the good of the house, but really to hear 
the news, or rather to enjoy the curious pleasure experi- 
enced by human bipeds in retelling and rehearsing from 
many different lips what they know ‘perfectly already — 
like the readers who enjoy the whole of “ The Ring and 
the Book.” Amongst these grave citizens was Mr. War- 
ner, the owner of the large linen-draper's shop, which 
makes the High Street so resplendent with plate glass 
and fashionable fabrics. 

“ If ever I saw guilty written on a man's face,” he 
observed thoughtfully, “it was stamped upon Ever- 
ard's.” 

“ I never saw a fellow with such a brazen look,” 
returned young Cooper, of the great auctioneering firm. 
“Eastbrook says he is awfully clever.” 

“ Those fellows generally are,” added Strutt, the prin 


172 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


cipal tailor, removing the cigar from his lips and looking 
lovingly at it. “How I pity those poor Maitlands! ” 

“Nice fellow, young Maitland! I’ve known him from 
a boy,” said Warner. “They always deal with us. He 
was in my shop on the very day of the murder.” 

“Ah! and he was in mine on that same day,” added 
Strutt. “ Taking manners he has. Till he went to 
Cambridge, every thread he wore came from us. I know 
him well.” 

“Looks ill; trouble, perhaps,” chimed in young Mr. 
West, cashier at the county bank. “I hear that this 
Everard was bred up with him.” 

“He was,” returned Warner; “but this young Mait- 
land's manner is up to everything. The young scamp ! 
he came into our establishment on New Year's eve. 
Marches up to me with his hand held out, looking as if 
he'd come from London on purpose to see me. e How are 
you, Warner ? A happy New Year ! ' and so on. ‘ How 
well you are looking ! ' Inquires for every creature in my 
house. Presently asks if I can cash a check for him — 
check of Sir Lionel Swaynestone's, ten guineas, as good 
paper as the Bank of England's, of course. He wanted 
all gold, which we couldn't quite do, and had to send a 
young man to Cave's for some of it. ‘ This check is for 
charities in our East End parish, which is frightfully 
poor,' said he, and so on, and so on. e And if you should 
happen by mistake to slip in an additional guinea, 
Warner,' says his worship, ‘ I'll promise you to overlook 
it for bnce.' Well, there was something in the lad's way 
that got the better of me, and I was weak enough to slip 
in the extra coin, though we make a point of keeping to 
local charities ; and, upon my soul, I felt as if I had 
received the favor, not he. Those are the manners to 
make one's way in the world with.” 

“ And those are the people who deserve to get on,” in- 
terposed the auctioneer; “ not your surly, defiant fellows, 
like this Everard. By George! to see "him look at the 
witnesses. I fancy he'd like to have the physicking of 
some of them ! ” 

“ That's queer about the check,” said Strutt, the tailor. 
“ Why, he got us to cash him a check that same day, 
and would have it gold, too! Our check was by the Vicar 
of Oldport — five guineas.” 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 173 

“ What ! the same day ? " asked another citizen, who 
had been listening. “ What did he want with fifteen 
guineas in gold in his pocket? " 

“Well," replied Strutt, “he said he couldn't bear 
paper; it never seemed real to him. And he got over me 
with his extra coins just as he did over Warner. We 
showed him some new patent braces. ‘ Dear me, Strutt! ’ 
says he, f is it possible that you don't know that the 
younger clergy expect to have these things found them? ' 
looking as grave as a judge. ‘ Found them, really, Mr. 
Maitland?' says I. ‘ To be sure! braces and smoking- 
caps, worked by devout females.' Not much to say, but 
the quaintness of the manner tickled me, and one of our 
young men laughed out. Maitland never smiled, but 
asked for some handkerchiefs. f The faithful don't sup- 
ply handkerchiefs, unluckily,' says he." 

“He didn't look much like joking in the box, poor 
chap!" said Cooper, reflectively. “Wonder what he 
wanted with all that gold?" 

“People are fond of gold, particularly ladies and 
men," observed young West, who was still more surprised 
than the tradesmen at Cyril's passion for specie. He 
stroked his mustache thoughtfully, and wished that pro- 
fessional etiquette did not forbid him to relate his anec- 
dote, which he thought might throw some light on the 
bag of coin found in the wood. 

Cyril had visited the bank on that same day, and 
drawn thirty pounds on his own account. West asked 
him the usual question, “Notes or gold?" expecting to 
be asked for, perhaps, five pounds gold, and the rest 
paper, and looked a little surprised at the ready answer 
“Cold." 

Cyril laughed. “ You think it odd to carry so much 
gold about, Mr. West?" he asked. 

“ It is unusual, certainly, Mr. Maitland, and, if it were 
known, would be dangerous." 

“ Oh, no one suspects a starveling curate of being 
overburdened with coin! A handful of sovereigns loose 
about me is a whim of mine. It makes me fancy myself 
a rich man; there is an Arabian Nights' flavor about it. 
What a Dives you must feel when you shovel up the sov- 
ereigns in that knowing little shovel of yours! " 

Mr. West replied that he could more readily realize the 


174 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


sensations of Lazarus, and asked his customer if he did 
not frequently lose money, when he saw him carelessly 
drop the three little piles of gold into his waistcoat 
pockets. 

“ I might if I stood on my head,” returned Cyril, “and 
that is not probable. If you should hear of a mild curate 
being murdered and robbed in the course of the next few 
days, you will be able to bear witness against the assassin. 
Nice weather for the season, isn’t it? Good morning.” 

“Fifteen and thirty make forty-five,” mused young 
West, “ and two fellows would have at least five pounds 
gold more about them in the common course of things. 
Yet, to hear Maitland talk, you would think he never 
moved without his pockets full of specie. A whim of 
his! Clergy can lie as well as others.” 

“ I tell you what,” he added aloud, I expect young 
Maitland could open people’s eyes about this murder, if 
he cared to. Those fifteen sovereigns went into that bag. 
I’ll lay any money.” 

“Not it,” returned Cooper. “A fellow wouldn’t 
ask a parson to help him in such a scrape, chum or no 
chum.” 

“He’d ask the devil himself,” interposed young 
Durant, who was articled to his uncle, Everard’s solic- 
itor.” 

“In that case he would turn to a lawyer,” retorted 
Cooper, slyly. 

“ Well,” pursued West, “ did you ever see a fellow 
stutter over his evidence like that? And Maitland so 
ready with his tongue. He was afraid df incriminating 
his friend, poor chap! ” 

“I was sorry for Miss Maitland,” said Warner. “To 
see her tremble! Somebody said she was engaged to 
Everard.” 

“No engagement, my uncle says,” replied Durant. 
“ A pretty girl, like her brother, but older, I suppose.” 

“Why, they are twins! Everybody knows the Mal- 
bourne twins,” said Mr. Warner. “An escape for her, 
if she cared for this doctor fellow. Nice girl; our 
people always like to serve her. Do you think they’ll 
hang him, Strutt? ” 

“I tell you what,” broke in Burton, the landlord; “it’s 
no hanging business. Ten to one, Lee attacked him. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


175 


In. any case, there was a stiff struggle. Look at the torn 
coat and the black eye.” 

“If you try to murder me with a pint pot, Burton, and 
I round upon you, and hit out straight till I’m down, it’s 
none the less murder,” said another customer. 

“This will be manslaughter at Belminster,” said the 
landlord, oracularly. “Who'll bet upon it? I’ll take 
any odds.” 

. Even more surprised than Mr. West was Lilian, when, 
on her parting with Cyril on his return to his duties, 
he asked her to lend him a couple of sovereigns. 

“Why, you extravagant boy! Have you spent all 
those we gave you for your parish? ” she asked. 

Cyril shrugged his shoulders. “ You know the 
fellow of old, Lill, and how he scatters his coins. Only 
three guineas, all told, you know.” 

“Oh, Cyll ! And Sir Lionel's t en ? ” 

“ On paper. You can't pay your railway fare with a 
check. Oh, yes! scold away. I ought to have brought 
more money with me, I dare say. I never carry coin 
about, dear; too sure to lose it. But, wonder of wonders, 
I do chance to have a five pound note. There!” 

Cyril had repaired to the Rectory for the first time since 
New Year's eve to bid his mother good-by. He could 
not bear to be there after what had occurred, he said, and 
he especially shrunk, though he did not say so, from 
meeting Lilian. 

“ Poor dear fellow! sensitive as he is, no wonder he can 
not bear to be here,” commented Mr. Maitland. “ It is 
a sore trial for us all,” he sighed, as Lilian turned her 
head away. 

For he knew now of Lilian's love; she had told him all 
in the terrible quarter of an hour in his study on New 
Year's day, when he broke the horror of Everard's arrest 
to her, and she reproached him passionately for his dis- 
belief in the innocence of the accused. 

But Cyril was obliged to conquer his repugnance, and 
bid his invalid mother farewell, and the rush of emotion 
which overcame him in stepping over the threshold, so 
lately desecrated by Everard's arrest, was thought only 
natural and creditable to him. Lilian met him there, 
and drew him aside to her room, where Everard's gift of 
Guercino's Guardian Angel gazed with his rapt, earnest 


176 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


gaze far away over the sorrowful earth to the distant 
heaven of joy and purity. 

“Oh, Cyril!” cried Lilian, “why did you not come 
before? I have wanted you so. They are all against 
him. Every one believes him guilty but me. Tell me, 
dear — oh, tell me that one at least is true to him! You 
are his friend; you cannot think him guilty. 

Cyril paused, his own emotion smothered, as it were 
by this outburst of Lilian's, an outburst so foreign to her 
usual calm self-control and restrained strength ; then he 
opened his arms in a rush of the old, lifelong affection, 
and clasped Lilian to his heart. 

“ I do believe in him,” she said ; “he is as innocent as 
an unborn babe. I know it — I Tcnow it! ” 

“ Dear Cyril, I knew you would be true,” replied 
Lilian. “What shall we do, Cyril? Oh! what shall we 
do?” 

“What, indeed?” returned Cyril, overcome by the un- 
accustomed passion of Lilian, whose tears mingled with 
his own, as the twins cried in each other’s arms, just 
as they had done in the old days of childhood. 

“ Keep up your heart, Lill,” said Cyril, caressingly, 
when they had recovered themselves a little. “After all, 
what is it? An idiotic mistake, a foolish mare's nest, 
invented by these stupid rustics. A little inquiry will 
set all right.” 

“But this verdict — oh, Cyll!” exclaimed Lilian, let- 
ting her head droop once more on her brother's shoulder, 
and weeping afresh. 

“What is the verdict?” asked Cyril, rather trem- 
ulously, as he stroked the rich waves of Lilian's hair, and 
rejoiced that she could not see his face. “Surely 
not — ” 

“Murder,” replied Lilian, in low, shuddering tones. 

Cyril uttered an exclamation. Was it an oath ? Lilian 
did not even pause to commend it to the recording angei's 
lenience. Blue fire shot from his eyes, and he ground 
his teeth. 

“Asses!” he exclaimed, at last. “Never mind the 
coroner and his stupid verdict, darling,” he added, sooth- 
ingly. “ Coroners happily do not administer justice. A 
very little evidence will set things straight. Henry was 
not in the wood. They can not prove him to have been 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 17 ? 

in two places at once. Widow Dove being out that night 
was unlucky." 

“Everything seems unlucky,” sighed Lilian. “The 
stars in their courses fight against him, Cyril.” 

Lilian raised her head, and looked sorrowfully and 
appealingly, as it seemed, into her brother’s eyes ; and a 
rush of deep affection, springing from the purest sources 
in his nature, clouded the young man's glance, and he 
clasped her once more protectingly to his breast, feeling, 
as in the days of his spotless boyhood, that no human 
being could ever be so close and dear to him as this twin- 
sister, whose being was so closely and mysteriously inter- 
woven with his own. All affections and ties that had 
since arisen seemed as nothing in comparison with this 
one strong bond of primal instinctive love ; even the bond 
of marriage seemed but a secondary thing by the side of 
it. 

The twins had drifted apart of late years. They had 
thought that the old childish union must naturally grow 
weaker with the increasing complex claims of mature life; 
but now they realized that it had only sunk out of sight 
for a time, like an underground stream, to break forth 
again with renewed power. Lilian's weakness and 
momentary self-abandonment called out all that was man- 
liest and best in Cyril. Hers, he knew, was the deeper, 
stronger nature. He leaned habitually on her, and now 
he was touched to find her leaning on him; and the tears 
they shed together renewed and reconsecrated the strong 
kinship between them, like some holy chrism. 

He felt a happier and better man than he had been for 
many weary months after that mingling of tears, and the 
thought flashed through him, with a mingling of pain 
and sweetness, that they were too closely united not to 
stand or fall together; either he must drag Lilian down, 
or she must raise him up. Lilian would surely, he 
thought, as he gazed into her clear, deep, beautiful eyes, 
be in some way his salvation. In the mean time he 
soothed and comforted her. 

“You see, Lill,” he said, “somebody killed poor Lee, 
probably by accident. And if things came to the worst 
with Everard, that somebody would certainly come for- 
ward and clear him." 

This seemed curious reasoning, and yet it com- 
12 


1^8 WB SILENCE OF' DEAN MAITLAND. 

for ted Lilian strangely. “ My great hope is in Alma,” 
she said. “ I am sure she can throw light upon the 
affair.” 

A hot flame shot over Cyril's face, and he turned his 
gaze from his sister’s and looked out of the window. 
“No doubt,” he replied. 

“ And then,” continued Lilian, lifting her head with a 
proud, indignant flush, “this hideous aspersion must van- 
ish.” 

“ Good heavens! Lilian, do you mean that they — ” 

“You have not followed the evidence, Cyril?” asked 
Lilian. “ Get the Advertiser, and you will see. Yes, 
they dare — they actually dare,” she continued, drawing 
herself up, and walking up and down with gestures of 
indignant disdain, while her eyes shot forth such a stream 
of light as Cyril's were wont to do, “ to charge him with 
Alma's ruin ! ” 

The twins had been looking more alike than ever dur- 
ing their impassioned interview, till Lilian in her fiery 
indignation, seemed like an intensified Cyril; but now 
the softness and calm strength, which seemed to have 
passed from the sister to the brother, suddenly left the 
latter, and his face changed and hardened, but he said 
nothing. 

“ My hope is that Alma may not die,” continued 
Lilian, not observing him in the intensity of her passion. 

“Die!” interrupted Cyril, in a deep, strange voice, 
while his breath came gaspingly. “ Is there danger?” 

“Yes; but God is good. He will not let her die till 
she has proved Henry's innocence.” 

Cyril was trembling with a terrible hope, and yet a 
dread of what he dared not even in thought acknowledge. 
He could not speak for some moments, but looked out 
into the chill garden, smothering this fierce emotion, 
and striving to stifle a wish that formed itself in spite of 
his better nature. At last he turned to Lilian, whose 
unexhausted passion continued to pour itself out in the 
same strain, with the radiant smile whose magnetism so 
few could resist. 

“ What idiots we are, Lill," he said, “ wasting our 
fears upon this phantom! Old Hal will be here laughing 
at the absurd mistake in a week. There needs no inter- 
position of Providence to arrange that simple matter. 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


179 


And, if it were not so,” he added, his brow darkening, 
<f he must be free — at any cost — at any cost,” he repeated, 
below his breath. 

“At any cost,” he repeated, as he drove his father 
into Oldport; and he turned and looked upon the gray 
head by his side with a strange mixture of tenderness 
and dismay. Mr. Maitland was conversing cheerily as 
they drove along, with a view to keeping up Cyril's 
spirits, and carefully avoiding the subject which was 
uppermost in everybody's mind. 

“ So Marion declines to come to us,” he said, at last. 

“ Yes,” replied Cyril, in the plaintive tone with which 
he usually discussed small annoyances. “ She says 
that her place is at Woodlands, under present circum- 
stances.” 

“ Poor dear! she is a brave girl. Perhaps she is right. 
While George and his wife are there she will be cared 
for. Yes, she is right. Yet for Lilian's sake — well — 
Why, Cyril lad,” he added, as Cyril lifted his hat for a 
moment to cool his hot forehead, just as they were pass- 
ing the Temple and the fatal wood above it, “that is a 
nasty bruise on your head! How did you get it? ” 

“ That?” replied Cyril, replacing his hat with a smile 
and gently flicking the pony into a better pace. “Oh, I 
did that ages ago! I ran against a door in the dark. 
Here are the Swaynestones. How well Ethel sits her 
horse! Maude is inclined to be heavy.” 

“Those poor Maitlands!” Maude Swaynestonc was 
saying to her sister. “How glad Cyril must be to get 
back to his parish! ” 

“How he must hate papa!” returned Ethel, hotly, 
“ or despise him for arresting an innocent man on such 
flimsy grounds! ” 

“My dear Ethel, your weakness for Doctor Everard 
carries you over the bounds of reason.” 

When Cyril reached the station, he obtained every 
local paper published, and forgot to pay for them in his 
eagerness till gently reminded. 

“Just in time, sir,” the stall-keeper said, as he handed 
him his change. “We have no copies of the Adver- 
tiser left. All the papers printed double editions, too. 
The Everards and Maitlands are so well known in these 
parts.” 


180 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


“Are they?" replied Cyril, turning away with a flash 
of blue fire from his eyes. 

“Well, I am blowed!” cried the stall-keeper’s boy 
assistant, doubled up with laughing. “If that ain’t 
young Maitland hisself ! ” 

Cyril’s hands shook as he opened the sheets and ran his 
eye down the columns till he saw, in large capitals, “ The 
Swaynestone Murder. Adjourned inquest. Verdict.” 
He held the paper so as to shield his face from the gaze 
of his fellow-travellers, and read with growing horror, 
until cold drops stood on his forehead, and his lips grew 
dry and hard. 

“I never dreamed of this,” he muttered. “Heaven is 
my witness, I never dreamed of it ! ” 

Life seemed to him one hopeless tangle of error and 
misery, against which he was powerless to strive. Lab- 
yrinth after labyrinth seemed to draw him within their 
interminable folds, till his brain was dazed and his heart 
sick. Nowhere could he catch the clew to any straight 
course; by no means could he unwind the deadly coil 
that Fate had wound so closely and thickly round him; 
as he thought, forgetting his own share in the work. 
What was the good, he wondered, of being born into a 
world so complex, so bewildering, so full of complicated 
motive and baffled purpose, so beset by the devil and all 
his works? He felt as weak as any weaned child, as 
terrified as a boy in the dark, in the presence of the 
gigantic evils striding upon him; his will seemed to melt 
like wax within him. Then he remembered Lilian in 
her unwonted passion, and the memory was like the balm 
of morning breezes through the open window of a sick- 
room, and he made a stand against the mental and moral 
swoon which threatened him. Yes, in Lilian, his bet- 
ter self, the saving clause of his being spoke, and he 
murmured to himself once more, “ At any cost.” 

Some fresh travellers got in at Belminster, and Cyril en- 
tered into conversation with them, which became ani- 
mated as they touched upon congenial topics. 

“What a brilliant lad!” one of them observed to his 
companion, as they drove away from Waterloo; “ one of 
the half dozen who can talk.” 

“ It will be all right,” Cyril thought to himself, as he 
sped eastward in his hansom through the crowded streets, 
•* something will turn up — some happy chance.” 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


181 


CHAPTER XVI. 

Early on a bleak spring morning, cold with the bitter 
chill which comes only at the moment just before the 
dawn of day or the turn of winter, and strikes into the 
very marrow of the bones, Cyril Maitland was entering 
Belminster by the steep road descending into the ancient 
city from the windy downs which partially surround 
it. 

Early as it was, he had walked far, having risen from 
his sleepless couch in utter restlessness, and sought to 
still his inward fever by bodily exercise. A cup of milk 
at a farm-house, and a crust of bread, which he tried in 
vain to swallow, formed his frugal breakfast. He had in 
his hand a manual of Lenten devotion, which he could 
not read. His beautiful eyes were brilliant with fever, 
and appeared all the larger from the dark circles beneath 
them. “1 cannot bear this much longer,” he murmured 
to himself, as he descended the steep chalky road, and 
gazed mechanically on the gray old city, with its solemn 
towers and buttressed minster, lying in the gray, chill 
light beneath the leaden sky; “ my brain will give way.” 

On the slope of the opposite hill were some large 
gloomy buildings, one of which, the county jail, struck 
upon his sense with sickening horror. Everard was there 
to undergo his trial; for nothing had occurred, as Cyril 
so fondly hoped, to deliver him, and he was beginning to 
wonder if it were possible that, in spite of all the compli- 
cated machinery of English justice, an innocent man 
could suffer the penalty of a great crime. To-day, Cyril 
thought, it must be decided. If the wished-for some- 
thing failed to turn up, one terrible alternative remained, 
and Henry must be delivered, as he had told Lilian, “ at 
any cost.” 

He walked hurriedly on, as those walk who are chased 
by terrible cares — with something of the weary haste of 
wild animals ever on the alert for lurking danger — be- 
tween the old-fashioned timbered cottages, stuck at pic- 
turesque angles, as if dropped by chance on the hillside, 
and becoming more numerous till they fell into continuous 
line, as he reached the bottom of the hill where the river 


182 


TEE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


Bele wound its quiet course through level mead and 
round about the old houses, which lay humbly, as it were, 
at the feet of the lordly cathedral and the wealthy streets 
of the ancient city. Here a bridge spanned the stream, 
and a little way back from the road stood a quaint mill, 
built over an archway, to admit the passage of the swift- 
flowing water, and overgrown on its gabled, weather- 
stained stone front by a vine, on which a leaf or two yet 
lingered, and about which pigeons clustered, hoping for 
sunsliine, and sheltered from the bleak east wind. 

Cyril seated himself on the low stone wall of the bridge, 
and looked down into the dark stream, on the banks of 
which the cottages clustered thickly at a little distance 
from the road. His watch told him that he had not yet 
consumed all the weary time, and the running water had 
a strange attraction for him — the idea of sinking beneath 
it, and being hurried on away and away forever was so 
restful, though he smiled bitterly at the thought that it 
was scarcely deep enough to end a man’s troubles. A 
child had been drowned there from a cottage garden the 
day before, but he did not know this. 

The musical chimes of the city told the quarter in 
melodious vibrations; bugles were ringing from the 
barracks on the heights; the hum of busy city life was 
rising and deepening. When the hour struck, he would 
have to join Lilian and his father in the court, to watch 
the trial, and perhaps bear witness. He almost envied 
Everard his place in the prisoner’s dock. He at least was 
tortured by no doubts, he had no wrestlings with a weak 
and divided will; his course lay plain and straight before 
him. Many thoughts passed through Cyril’s mind as he 
sat there, regardless of the bleak wind, and watched the 
unresting water, and once more he lived through the 
scene of the previous Sunday. 

His rector, with cruel kindness, seeing that the young 
man was overwrought by the labors which he discharged 
with such apparently conscientious zeal, and tortured by 
anxiety for his friend, had bidden him take a little 
holiday, and go home to prepare himself for the ordeal of 
Everard’s trial. Thus, on the Sunday, Cyril found him- 
self once more in the old familiar home, now so distaste- 
ful to him, through bitter associations. The Malbourne 
witnesses, including most of the Maitland household, were 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


183 


subpoenaed for the following day, and all were present at 
church, most of them with a lively remembrance of Cyril's 
sermon on Innocent's Day, when the slayer and the slain 
had been there also. To-day Cyril enjoyed the rare luxury 
of forming one of the congregation; but his father, hav- 
ing mentioned at luncheon, with a profound sigh, that it 
was christening Sunday, Cyril, knowing that neither he 
nor Mr. Marvyn enjoyed the duty, offered to take it for 
him. 

“They make me do nearly all the baptisms at St. 
Chad's," he said, smiling at the recollection of his fellow- 
curates' frequent requests to relieve them of this duty, 
“ because the babies seldom cry with me. And they are 
not engaging babies," he added; “ utter strangers to 
water, much less soap. We frequently have children of 
six or seven, and they need management." 

So when the time came, Cyril rose from his place in 
the chancel, and walked down the church to the font, 
round which three infants were ranged with their spon- 
sors. The congregation turned to the west, and Lilian 
watched her brother with loving reverence, as he poured 
the water into the font, and began the solemn service in 
his perfect manner, giving each word its proper weight 
and purest enunciation in his matchless voice, which was 
like an organ with many stops. The bright afternoon 
sun of early spring fell upon him and the pathetic little 
group of poor men's babes brought for his ministrations, 
and Lilian no longer wondered at his being chosen for 
the duty at St. Chad's, when she saw him bend and take 
the children with reverent tenderness in his arms, and, 
by some subtle magnetism in his touch, hush incipient 
wailings into peaceful, wide-eyed quiet. 

The most impressive and touching of all the 
Church's offices, this baptismal service seemed, . under 
Cyril's ministration, yet more solemn and pathetic, and 
the most unimaginative and commonplace woman, whose 
child was restored to her arms in that careful and digni- 
fied manner, could not but feel that something august 
and wonderful had befallen the unconscious infant, in the 
interval. George Joseph, a lusty babe whose vigorous 
roars had occasioned his being transported three times to 
the churchyard, subsided into cherubic quiet after one 
or two rebellious efforts at a scream, which the graceful 


184 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


young priest soothed with scarcely perceptible gestures, 
and began his Christian course in a most laudable man- 
ner; then came a tiny Elizabeth Jane, who conducted 
herself with equal propriety. Then Cyril turned to the 
third infant, which he did not recognize by its friends, 
as he had the others. 

It was carried by a widow woman, who lived alone in 
the village, and was known far and wide as the friend of 
the friendless, and the natural visitor of every house in 
which there was trouble of any kind; she was also the in- 
variable sponsor of infants who conferred no credit on 
their friends. This child was better dressed than the 
cottager’s children, all in white, with black ribbons at its 
shoulders. It w r as a baby that no woman, from a queen 
downward, could have looked upon without longing to 
kiss, and was uttering various little dove-like murmurs, 
which occasionally rose to a crow of joy, and which the 
magic touch, and perhaps the glance of the priest, 
quieted into the softest sounds. 

“ Name this child,” said Cyril, turning to the spon- 
sors, and expecting to hear some feminine appellation, 
a female having already by mistake taken precedence of it. 

“ Benjamin Lee,” replied the widow, in clear, high 
tones, which seemed to ring through the silence of the 
church and pierce into the very core of CyriFs heart. 
He staggered, and his face for a moment was whiter than 
the infant's dress or his own stainless robe. Not the 
child which St. Christopher bore on his giant shoulders 
pressed with a more overwhelming weight upon him than 
did this cooing babe, looking up with the beautiful, far- 
off gaze of baby innocence into his white face, press upon 
the shuddering arm which infolded him. 

For some seconds a dead silence, broken only by the 
child's happy murmurs, filled the church. The w r hole 
congregation saw the terrible emotion with which Cyril 
was shaken — his father, Mr. Marvyn, who w T as looking 
down pitifully from the reading-desk and reproaching 
himself for not having prepared his pupil, and thus saved 
him from the shock, the Swaynestones, the Garretts, his 
mother and Lilian, all the old familiar faces; and there 
was a kind of symphathetic stir through the congregation, 
and a feeling of terror lest the poor young fellow should 
give way utterly, and be unable to continue the office. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


185 


But after those few seconds, which seemed an eternity 
to Cyril, he mastered himself with a strong effort, under 
the stimulus of the many-eyed sympathetic glances upon 
him, and, plunging his right hand into the holy water, 
went quietly on, “ Benjamin Lee, I baptize thee," etc., 
with his accustomed solemnity, nor did his voice falter 
once till he returned the infant to its guardian's arms, ad- 
justing its robes with his usual care as he did so; only 
there was a deeper meaning than ever in his voice as he 
spoke the pathetic words of the ritual, especially these: 
“that he may not be ashamed — to manfully fight under 
Christ's banner against sin, the world, and the devil;" 
and Lilian, who so seldom displayed any emotion, cried 
unrestrainedly at this passage. 

But more than once during the remainder of the bap- 
tismal office, Cyril, instead of reading “they" and 
“them," for the three infants, read “he" and “him," 
especially at the concluding exhortation, when he looked 
abstractedly at the now sleeping Benjamin Lee, and said, 
“Ye are to take care that this child ," etc. 

Then he returned with a slow and weary step to the 
chancel, his gaze fixed on the pavement, and the Nunc 
Dimittis ringing in his ears, with a strange feeling of its 
inappropriateness — for how different was his case from 
that of the aged Simeon with the Redeemer in his arms! 
He felt the sympathetic gaze of the congregation, who 
were still watching his haggard, troubled face; and sat 
during the sermon wdth that face, and all the passions 
which moved it, covered by the sleeve of his surplice, like 
that of Ulysses at the feast. 

He had looked down fearfully upon the sweet baby 
face resting so placidly against his snowy dress, the 
“ priestly ephod," as he had fondly called it with Keble, 
and his bowels yearned over the helpless creature so 
unconscious of its doom and of all the tragedy caused by 
its innocent, unwelcome existence; he looked in search 
of some likeness that might betray its unknown parent. 
Was ic fancy that he seemed to see, now a look of the 
slain man, now a look of his own father, hut on the 
whole and with fearful distinctness, the features and 
expression of Lilian? Would others see this, and would 
they wonder at the accidental resemblance, or did it 
exist only in his own overwrought, fevered fancy? He 


186 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


could only pray that the child might grow up with other 
looks; yet dared he, ought he, so to pray?” 

This was the scene re-enacted in his fancy, as he sat 
on the low stone wall and watched the river’s unceasing 
flow, and felt no chill in the biting wind. The little 
head seemed to rest still on his throbbing breast; the 
sweet, deep eyes to gaze up into his; and the tiny dim- 
pled fist to clutch vaguely at the folds of the priestly 
garment stirring the wildly beating heart beneath it 
with an emotion that was not wholly pain, while he still 
seemed to read those solemn words of baptismal renun- 
ciation and manful fighting under the sacred banner — 
words that strike with such awful reproach on the erring 
soldier of the cross. 

Then he thought of Lilian, and his heart seemed to 
swoon within him ; and then of Marion, the centre of all 
his hopes ; and he could look no longer on the flowing 
water, but rose, suddenly conscious of the bleak wind in 
which he shuddered, and hurried on like one driven by 
thought, his eyes on the dusty road. Better, far better, 
it would have been to have taken the step he medi- 
tated at such dreadful cost to himself at the very first, be- 
fore this fearful coil wound itself round Everard ; every 
moment's delay made it worse, and now there was scarcely 
room for fate to alter things. 

A beautiful music rose mellow and solemn upon his 
distracted ear, and floated softly over the smoke-wreathed 
city — the cathedral bells calling to morning prayer. 
Others sounded from the various churches in differing ca- 
dence, but mostly in monotone, and blended with the deli- 
cate chiming of the minster ; none were silent, since it was 
Lent, and the melodious confusion penetrated with sweet 
pain the very depths of Cyril's heart. It recalled the 
pleasant chiming of the wagon bells as he heard them on 
the fatal evening which began all this trouble, and it 
reminded him, by its association with the cathedral, 
whose light flying buttresses were now springing just over 
his head, of all the hopes to which he was about to bid 
farewell forever. Marion's charming face hovered once 
more smilingly before him, and a stifled sob escaped him. 
Not many men, he thought, had such high hopes to 
renounce, and he walked on up the steep street, past the 
quaint, arcaded houses and the delicately carved and 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


187 


fretted Gothic cross, a man broken in his youth, utterly 
wrecked at starting, with a cup to drink that was beyond 
his strength. 

A ragged child approached him with tremulous voice 
and large pleading eyes, offering primroses to sell, and 
Cyril stopped even in his misery — for he loved children, 
and they loved him — to stroke its face and pity its chilled, 
bare limbs, and give it pence and kindly words before he 
hurried on. The boy somehow recalled, by his wide, 
clear gaze, the unacknowledged child he had baptized. 
Would that child be thus barefoot ? he wondered. Had 
this boy a father who suffered him to shiver in the bitter 
blast ? The sweet bell-music went floating drowsily on. 
Cyril found his father and Lilian, and finally reached the 
court. 

The grand jury had found a true bill of murder against 
Everard, and ho now appeared in answer to that indict- 
ment. 

Lilian looked up, as Cyril dared not, when Everard 
entered, and walked with his usual firm step and erect 
bearing, but with an air of unaccustomed hauteur, into 
the prisoner’s dock. A young emperor could not have 
ascended a throne with less humility or a gaze more unfal- 
tering than that with which the usually unassuming, 
gentle-mannered Everard mounted the dreadful eminence 
of the accused criminal. He looked steadily, some said 
defiantly, all round the building, measuring judge and 
jury, counsel, and all with a comprehensive gaze; it was 
only when his eyes fell on the Maitlands that a hot flush 
sprang over his face and a quiver troubled it for a 
moment. 

His features were sharpened by anxiety and suffering, 
and there were dark circles under his eyes; but the con- 
finement had not impaired his magnificent strength, and 
the reporters described him as a powerful and resolute 
man, with a defiant air. When called upon to plead, his 
“ Not guilty,” with an emphasis on the negative, sounded 
like a challenge flung in the teeth of the whole world, 
which truly seemed to be arraigned against him. 

The judge did not like his looks; he thought such a 
bearing unsuitable to an accused person, whether inno- 
cent or guilty. He looked in vain for any signs of quail- 
ing in the honest hazel eyes, full of the pride of indig- 


188 THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 

nant innocence. The judge’s own gaze plainly expressed 
to those who knew the man, “ This fellow will have to 
bite the dust.” 

Mr. Justice Manby was well known as a hanging judge, 
and, though he was as just and upright as perhaps only 
English judges are, he was human, and thus liable to 
have his judgment biased by prejudice, and he conceived 
a prejudice at first glance against the haughty prisoner 
arraigned before him. Yet he thought himself prejudiced 
the other way. Because he was a strong Conservative; a 
staunch upholder of hereditary right and class distinc- 
tions, he feared lest he should unconsciously incline to 
lenience toward criminals of gentle birth, and said within 
himself that he would not spare any for his gentleness, 
but rather consider how far more guilty such are than the 
uncultured herd, who scarcely know their right hand 
from their left. The jury, whose minds were full of 
Palmer and his diabolical strychnine poisonings, and who 
felt that strong measures must be taken to cripple the 
fearful power the doctor’s position of trust and unfet- 
tered responsibility in homes gives him, were also prej- 
udiced against him by this haughty bearing, and 
esteemed him to be a villain eminently dangerous to 
society. Truly, as Lilian said, the stars in their courses 
seemed to fight against Everard. 

Even his counsel did not believe his statement of the 
facts, and advised him very earnestly to plead guilty to 
the minor charge. “How can I plead guilty when I am 
innocent?” thundered Everard. “I tell you I never 
even saw the man after the Sunday, and had quite as 
much motive for killing you as him; indeed, more,” 
he added, for he felt inclined to personal violence on 
some of those who so sorely misjudged him, particularly 
this barrister, who was master of the peculiar facial 
expression that may be called the barrister’s sneer, the 
expression of a man who has seen too much of the wrong 
side of human nature. The counsel understood the flash 
of his client’s eyes, and, when he looked at his powerful 
frame, was glad that he was not like the unfortunate Ben 
Lee, alone in a wood with him. It was his business, 
however, to defend the prisoner, and not to judge him, 
and he did his best, fettered, as a man with any con- 
science must be, by the belief that his cause was a bad one. 


THE MLENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


189 


The great thing, as Cyril had suggested, was to prove 
an alibi ; and to this end, Granfer, William Grove's child, 
Winnie Maitland — a feeble trio, truly — and Widow Dove 
were relied upon. The latter, to Mr. Hawkshaw’s dismay, 
had already been subpoenaed for the prosecution, at which 
Everard smiled; he could not fear her. Straun, the 
blacksmith, who deposed to having seen Everard leaving 
the village in the direction of Swaynestone some time 
before Stevens saw him leave the Rectory by the back of 
the churchyard, was further reckoned a strong ally, 
but on being put to the test, he was fatally positive 
about the gray suit and the stick, and broke down utterly 
as to the time on cross-examination. 

Then Alma was a strong tower of hope, though reck- 
oned among the witnesses for the other side; she would 
at least dissipate the calumny based upon the misconcep- 
tions of Judkins and her step-mother, and would explain 
the nature of her meetings with Everard in the spring, 
when they had been accustomed to have long discussions 
upon Mrs. Lee’s symptoms, and she would also enlighten 
people about those unfortunate lectures on botany which 
Everard now saw with remorseful humiliation to have 
been so injudicious. 

As the trial proceeded, and witness after witness 
repeated or enlarged upon the former evidence, Everard 
realized the sensations of the man in the story, the hor- 
ror of which had fascinated his childhood — of the sleeper 
in the ghastly four-post bed, the top of which slowly 
and remorselessly descended upon him till it threatened 
to become too late to escape from the narrowed aperture, 
and he should struggle in vain against his irresistible 
doom. 

At first, in spite of all the annoyance and vexatious 
notoriety of his unjust committal and detention, Everard 
had believed that it must end, after the weighing and 
sifting of evidence at the final trial, in his acquittal: the 
worst he feared was leaving the court with the stains of 
unrefuted suspicion upon him: but, as the trial proceeded, 
a terrible conviction that a miscarriage of justice might 
occur was slowly burned into his soul. 

The appearance of Widow Dove in the witness-box gave 
him a faint hope, though, having been absent from home, 
she could not prove his presence at her cottage; she 


190 


TEE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


could merely show the credibility of his tale. It was not 
possible, he thought, that a man, acting as he was ac- 
cused of doing, would set up such a feeble pretence at 
alibi as to pretend to go to a house from which he averred 
the inmates were absent; it would be so very simple to 
upset this defence by the production of the inmates. 

What was his amazement on hearing the witness quietly 
depose, “On December 31, I was at home all day with 
my daughter, who was in bed with a cold. A book- 
hawker called in the forenoon; no one else came to the 
cottage till six in the evening, when Abraham Wood 
looked in on his way home from work to get a light for 
his pipe, and had some tea.” Questioned by Mr. Hawk- 
shaw, she said that she was in the house from twelve till 
six, not even going into her garden all that time. Her 
cottage had only two rooms, with a kind of shed or lean- 
to, which served as scullery. Asked at what hour she 
lighted her candle, she replied that she did so about dusk. 

The counsel did not guess what really happened — that 
the widow, busy in the sleeping-room with her daughter, 
let her gorse-fire burn out, and, being short of fuel, did 
not relight it, bitter cold as it was, till she wished to boil 
her tea-kettle after Everard had left the dark, fireless 
cottage, under the impression that it was untenanted; and 
the poor woman’s pride rendered her by no means eager 
to volunteer this information. The daughter corrobo- 
rated her mother’s statement, knowing nothing of the ex- 
tinguished fire or her mother’s occupation at the time of 
Everard’s visit, that of cutting gorse-stems in the shed. 
Wood, the laborer, who, beguiled by the cheery glow of 
the widow’s fire on his evening walk home, got his pipe- 
light and cup of tea at the cottage, gave evidence that 
the fire was alight. Mr. Hawkshaw thought his client a 
fool to invent so lame a story. Everard believed that he 
was under the influence of some dreadful nightmare, 
which must speedily end. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


191 


CHAPTER XVII. 

The Alma Lee who appeared in the witness-box was a 
very different being from the happy and innocent girl 
who rode home in Long’s wagon to the music of the bells 
in the gray November evening, unconscious of the com- 
plicated meshes of trouble which the fates were weaving 
about the simple strand of her commonplace lot. 

Her experience of the bitter realties of life had added 
a terrible lustre to her beauty, and developed her char- 
acter in an unexpected direction. It was a nature, as 
Lilian said, full of noble possibilities and strong for good 
or for evil, and in its perversion it resembled some 
mighty stream turned aside from its natural course, and 
overflowing its banks in new and disastrous ways, bring- 
ing devastation where it should have brought blessing. 
The shame which would have crushed slenderer and 
sweeter natures kindled a scornful indignation in Alma, 
and a sense of the cruel disproportion of her punishment 
to her guilt — a guilt which looked angel-faced by the 
side of a thousand deeper sins which daily pass not only 
unavenged, but almost as matters of course — kindled a 
fierce resentment in her. Suffering had hardened her; 
she was a moral ruin, and when she stepped with a firm 
and not ungraceful carriage into the witness-box, and 
looked round the court with haughty defiance, every one 
compared her bearing with that of the prisoner, and pro- 
nounced them a pair of impenitent evil-doers. 

Alma’s features had lost their youthful softness and 
indecision of outline; they were now like chiselled marble, 
firm and pure and beautiful in curve. They had indeed 
been chiseled into shape by the sharp strokes of passion 
and suffering and wrong — terrible sculptors, to whom the 
human face is as wax ready for modelling. The dark, 
almond-shaped, rather melancholy eyes now burned with 
the fire of intense resolution; the full, rich red lips were 
fuller, but firmer; they met in a curve of sharpest accu- 
racy, their former pretty wilfulness forgotten with girl- 
hood and innocence. Her figure had expanded into a 
statuesque nobility, and all rustic awkwardness in her gest- 


192 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


ures was now sw T allowed up in the unconscious dignity of 
her tragic fate. 

Her appearance created great surprise, and a murmur 
of involuntary admiration stirred the court as she entered 
the box and cast her defiant glance around. It was no 
gentle, penitent Magdalen, as people expected, but a 
proud, self-reliant woman, magnificent even in ruin. 
The girl in the wagon said her prayers daily, hoped for 
heaven, and would by no means have told a lie : so she 
thought, for she had never endured temptation, and had 
never needed to practice self-restraint in her easy, simple 
life, though she knew self-denial, but it was the self-de- 
nial of impulse, not principle. The woman in the wit- 
ness-box still prayed — she had prayed for the death of 
her unborn child — but she no longer hoped for heaven. 
She knew that it is not for such as love man more than 
God, and renounce it at the bidding of another, and yet 
she did not repent; she knew that her brief season of 
evil-doing was the sweetest in her life, sweeter far than 
any hopes of heaven had ever been; she regretted only 
that it was past forever. She was now an outcast from 
heaven above and from the world below, and lies were of 
little consequence to her. [ 

As she stood in the witness-box, one voice rang in her 
ears and through her heart with these words of terror : 
“Oh, Alma, save me, save me ! You know I never meant 
it ! " It was almost the last voice she heard before 
the terrible darkness that came upon her Avhen she felt 
that her hour was come, and there was no one to pity her. 
When at last the darkness cleared and her reason 
returned, that voice rang piercingly through all the 
chambers of her brain, awakening all the bitter misery of 
the past months with the added tragedy of that fatal 
night, and making her wish she had never been born. 

But nature, so inexorably just in exacting debts is 
equally just in paying them, and had in reserve an 
unsuspected store of wealth for the unfortunate girl. 
When she saw the beautiful child for whose death she 
had prayed, a fresh spring opened within her, and she 
rejoiced over him with the strong passion of her nature. 
Once more she ‘had something to love and live for, to devote 
herself to body and soul, something entirely her ow r n, 
all the more her own that he was scorned and rejected 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


193 


by others. Her joy in this innocent creature restored 
her to health of mind and body, and deepened her old, 
never-dying love for the man who had long ceased to love 
her — the man whose imploring cry, “ Oh, Alma, save me, 
save me ! ” always rang in her heart. 

Mr. Braxton, the counsel for the prosecution, handled 
this his favorite witness with the utmost delicacy of his 
art. To have her sworn, and say, “ I am Alma Lee, etc.; 
the deceased, Benjamin Lee, was my father. I last saw 
him alive on the afternoon of December 31,” was simple 
enough, but the difficulty was to get anything more from 
her. It was between four and five o’clock, she said, under 
the dexterous handling of Mr. Braxton — a handling 
fiercely criticised by Mr. Hawkshaw, and often provoking 
a battle-royal between the counsel, and obliging Mr. 
Justice Manby more than once to cast his truncheon into 
the arena as a signal to cease fighting. She was in the 
wood known as Temple Copse with a friend. That friend, 
she admitted reluctantly at length, was her child’s father; 
his name could in no wise be extracted from her. 

t( Were you in the wood by appointment ?” from Mr. 
Braxton. 

“Yes.” 

“Did the torn letter produced refer to the appoint- 
ment ?” 

“Yes.” 

“ Was it written by the prisoner ?” 

Furious onslaught on the part of Mr. Hawkshaw, inter- 
position of Mr. Justice Manby, and repetition of the ques- 
tion in a different form. 

“ By whom was the letter produced written? ” 

Silence on the part of witness. At last, after delicate 
manipulation on the part of Mr. Braxton, “ It was written 
by the person I met in the wood.” 

Sensation in court, which was crowded, and included a 
few ladies of lovely feature and rich attire. 

Alma continued, amid a repetition of skirmishes 
between the two counsel, and many rebellions against Mr. 
Braxton on her own part, to give the following evidence. 
She had been standing on the spot where her father subse- 
quently fell for some minutes with the mysterious friend, 
who was dressed in the fatal gray suit, and carried the 
stick produced in court. He offered her money for her 
13 


194 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


child’s support — a bag of gold. This she had refused 
many times, when her father appeared suddenly. 

He carried a stick — a rough and heavy staff, fresh cut 
from the hedge — was angry and excited, dashed the bag of 
gold to the ground, stamped on it, and began upbraiding 
the young man. He ordered his daughter to leave them, 
and she did so. She waited outside the copse, listening, 
and fearful that something would happen. She heard 
voices indistinct, and at last sounds like men struggling. 
She turned faint, and when she recovered a little there 
was silence. 

She was returning to the wood, when a figure rushed 
toward her, bleeding in the face, the gray suit torn and 
stained, and covered with brambles and dead leaves. He 
said — here the witness broke down, and wept so bitterly 
that she could not speak for some time — he said that he had 
killed her father by an accidental blow that he had given 
in defending himself; that Lee had assaulted him with 
great violence, of which he bore the mark; and at last he 
entreated her to save him. “ I promised that I would 
never betray him/’ said Alma, with calm simplicity, as 
she drew her black drapery round her, “and I never 
will.” She related further that she bid him leave the 
spot quickly, before her mother returned from Malbourne 
and met him, and that he did so; and that she herself 
regained her home as quickly as possible, and went to 
bed, being very ill, and knew and heard nothing of the 
search for and discovery of her father’s body until her 
partial recovery weeks later. 

The evidence of Judkins was fuller than that he gave 
at Oldport. He deposed to seeing Alma enter the wood 
shortly before Everard entered it from the opposite direc- 
tion. Ingram Swaynestone also witnessed to seeing -her, 
or rather a female form which he supposed to be hers, 
among the hazels which bordered the copse, as he rode 
up the meadow before he met the gray-suited figure. 
Swaynestone had often seen the two together in the 
spring, knew that Everard visited Mrs. Lee twice a day, 
and had seen Alma accompany him on his homeward way 
some distance, in earnest conversation with him. Jud- 
kins, in describing these meetings, said, in the witness- 
box, “they walked slow and strolling, like people who 
keep company/’ 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


195 


All this Alma admitted. Dr. Everard made her accom- 
pany him through a field or two sometimes, she said, 
that she might have fresh air, which, he said, she 
needed. He used to give her directions about her 
mother, and receive her account of her symptoms; he 
used also to ask her about plants, explain them to her, 
and ask her to procure him specimens. They could not 
say much respecting the symptoms before the woman 
who helped to nurse Mrs. Lee, because she was indiscreet, 
and told all to the patient. Dr. Everard had given her 
a book or some trifle every Christmas since she was six or 
seven years old. 

Alma was told of the peril of concealing a felony, she 
was threatened with committal for contempt, she was 
informed that she became an accessory to her father's 
death after the fact if she continued to conceal the name 
of the murderer; but she was stubborn, trembling and 
turning pale at the words “ accessory after the fact." 
She was further told that her oath required her not only 
to say whether or no the prisoner was the man who dealt 
the fatal blow, but to reveal the name of the actual mur- 
derer, supposing the accused to be innocent. 

Alma trembled more and more as her examination pro- 
ceeded; the heavy air made her giddy and faint, and the 
unaccustomed excitement and agitation of her terrible 
position confused her faculties. To the question, “ Had 
the prisoner, on leaving the wood, the stick produced in 
his hand?" she replied, “No; he was wringing his 
hands," and she made similar slips; and finally, to the 
question, “Is the man who met you in the copse the pris- 
oner in the dock, or some other man?" she replied with a 
sob and a shudder, in words that thrilled every ear in the 
building, “It is the prisoner." 

When Everard heard these fatal words, he trembled so 
that he seemed about to fall; the sweat of agony stood on 
his brow and dabbled the short, curly brown hair that 
he had pushed over it in the growing agitation of Alma's 
evidence; and the eyes with which he gazed upon the 
pale and shuddering witness had a dazed and filmy look. 
In one moment the real truth flashed upon him, illumi- 
nated by the lightning of Alma's passionate glances, and 
the whole history arranged itself dramatically before him 


196 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


in its minutest details with a vivid distinctness that 
never more left him. 

Glimpses of truth more bitter than death to believe had 
come upon him many a time before, only to be driven 
away by the scornful incredulity of a loyal and generous 
nature. As the evidence developed before him, these 
glimpses became more frequent and more difficult to com- 
bat, though the hateful suspicions were never dwelt upon; 
but now, in that moment of vivid, heart-piercing revela- 
tion, every little suspicious circumstance, unnoticed at the 
time, rose up with magic swiftness, and fitted into its 
natural place in one long unbroken chain of perfectly 
sequent, convincing evidence. Words, gestures, accents, 
once regarded in such different lights, now showed clear 
in one lurid flame; widely floating reminiscences, con- 
jectures, hypotheses rushed together in a coherent whole, 
and an awful sense of the n^stery of human iniquity 
caused Everard’s soul to swoon within him. A faint groan 
escaped him, audible, low as it was, in the startled, 
momentary silence of the court. 

“ There is no God,” he said within himself; “ there is 
no good; no help anywhere.” 

After this, the trial, which was virtually at an end, 
seemed to have no further interest for him. He stood in 
his dreadful place like one crucified, and listened abstract- 
edly to the further proceedings — Alma’s cross-examina- 
tion, Mr. Braxton’s triumphant, “That, my lord, closes 
the evidence for the prosecution,” Mr. Hawkshaw’s 
labored and lame address, the few and feeble witnesses 
for the defence and the judge’s able and comprehensive 
summing-up — with a listless face and a soul full of 
darkness. 

Cyril was not in court when Alma’s examination was 
thus concluded. He had listened to part of it on the 
previous day, and then rushed away, unable to bear it. 
On this morning he had felt unequal to hearing more, 
and a friend, seeing his condition of mental unrest, had 
recommended him to try a brisk walk, promising to tell 
him what passed whenever he should return to the vicin- 
ity of the court. Cyril wandered restlessly about, more 
haggard and feverish than ever, trying to brace himself 
to the performance of his obvious and long-neglected 
duty, and yet with the unreason of weak and sanguine 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


197 


temperaments, hoping against hope that something might 
still turn up to absolve him from the necessity before 
which every fibre of his being shuddered in mortal an- 
guish. 

The old-fashioned streets seemed to him like the archi- 
tecture of dreams, and the figures hurrying to and fro 
had no more reality for him than the flitting phantoms of 
a nightmare. The blood throbbed in his temples like the 
piston of a steam-engine; he wondered how his brain had 
borne its dreadful pressure so long. He wandered into 
the sweet, sunny stillness of the close, and strove to calm 
himself by the peaceful suggestions and hallowed associa- 
tions of the semi-monastic spot. The voices of children 
at play came harmoniously over the wall of the canons’ 
gardens; some quietly dressed ladies went by; the dean 
issued from beneath the lovely pointed arches which 
forpied a porch to the Deanery, and walked with a dig- 
nified quiet, free from loitering, across the sunshiny 
grass. Cyril looked wistfully at his bland, wholesome, 
yet delicate face, and remarked to himself on the pecul- 
iarly English combination of piety and aristocracy which 
is the special note of the higher ranks of Anglican clergy, 
and wondered whether piety or aristocracy were the larger 
ingredient in the mixture so pleasing to some minds. 
Years afterward he recalled these idle reflections, as peo- 
ple recall the trifles which belong to the critical moments 
of life and became stamped upon the memory along with 
the crises themselves. The rooks were busy in the great 
leafless elms, sailing across the blue sky or clustering about 
the boughs with a confused, reiterated cawing, which 
recalled the downs of home and the white peace of hoy' 
hood. 

The massive cathedral looked solemnly peaceful in the 
bright, cold, spring sunshine, which made the flying 
buttresses and other salient points cast sharply cut 
shadows on its gray surface. It seemed to offer peace tc 
Cyril's distracted soul, and he left the sunshine and 
entered the vast building, soothed for a moment by its 
shadowy echoing stillness. Some idea of betaking him- 
self to prayer possessed him, but he could not collect his 
thoughts, and he rose from his knees and paced the echo- 
ing aisles, looking up, as if for help, into the deep shadow 
of the arched roof. Some organ notes soon soared thither 


198 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


— a brief prelude; then Mendelssohn's air, “ If with all 
your hearts ye truly seek Me." His fancy supplied the 
mellow pathos of a tenor voice to the lovely melody, and 
he stood beneath the solid arches of the great Norman 
transept, wistful and hushed for a moment. 

“ Oh, that I knew where I might find him!" he 
echoed. 

The air died away, and, after a brief pause, _ one of 
Bach's magnificent fugues was thundered forth in com- 
plex, ever-increasing majesty, till it seemed charged with 
the agony and passion and exultation of some great war 
of young and mighty nations, full of the “ confused noise 
and garments rolled in blood," which belong to the war- 
rior's battle. The tumult echoed through all the recesses 
of Cyril's being; it gave an outlet to the stormy agitation 
within him. He surrendered himself to the full power of 
the mighty harmony, glad to lose himself, if but for a 
moment. But the conflict of the contrapuntal parts har- 
monized too well with the conflict in his soul; it was no 
longer a battle of the warrior, but a strife of powers, 
celestial and infernal. 

He covered his face with his hand, leaning against a 
pillar, and seemed to see countless legions of warring 
angels flash in glittering cohorts over the universe, and 
then to hear the crash of the counter-charge of the 
dusky armies of hell. Now the bright-armored squad- 
rons are driven back, and Cyril's heart shakes within 
him. Is hell stronger than heaven? Shall wrong con- 
quer right? Michael, the prince himself, is driven back, 
and the fiend, with the face of marred but never forgotten 
glory, is triumphant. But no; the adamantine swords 
flash out again, the dazzling wings cleave the blue ether, 
and the vast squadrons of dusky horror are driven back — 
back into endless abysses of chaotic night. 

The angel trumpets peal out in heart-stirring triumph, 
the music ceases, and Cyril is left alone, his cheek 
pressed against the chill, rough stone, and hot tears rush- 
ing down his face. Was the angel combat for a human 
soul? or was all that tumult of war only the strife 
within one narrow human breast? In that case he felt he 
was undone — his will was too weak; evil was too strong for 
him. He could find no peace, even in that holy place. 
He turned and paced rapidly down the long nave, and 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


199 


offered to a stray sightseer, in his abstraction, the strik- 
ing spectacle of an ascetic-looking young clergyman wear- 
ing his hat in a cathedral. 

“ Young man," said the stranger, solemnly accosting 
him, “ are you aware that this building is consecrated?" 

Cyril flushed, and tore off his hat, murmuring some 
words of explanation. Then he rushed out into the sun- 
shine, where he met his friend, evidently big with tid- 
ings. 

“ Well? " he asked, his lips growing dry with apprehen- 
sion. 

“Well, Maitland, I am afraid it is all up with the poor 
fellow. There is no doubt now: Alma Lee has confessed 
all." 

“All?" asked Cyril, steadying himself against the 
stone lintel of the side door. 

“ Yes. She was outside the copse. She heard a strug- 
gle; Everard rushed out, covered with blood, and said he 
had accidentally struck the fatal blow in self-defence, and 
implored her to save him." 

“ Everard? Did she swear that Everard did it?" asked 
Cyril, in a strained, unmusical voice. 

“Yes; she swore to him at last. Not that any one ever 
had the slightest doubt. Poor fellow! he should have 
pleaded guilty. After all, what is accidental homicide in 
self-defence?" 

“What indeed!" returned Cyril, in the same strange 
voice, with an unusual look in his face. 

He was silent for awhile, and his friend said nothing, 
sympathizing with his trouble. Then he pulled himself 
from the lintel with an effort, and walked quickly away. 
“ I must go to the court at once," he said, with quiet 
determination. 

“ I would stay away, if I were you," said the friend 
accompanying him nevertheless. “ After all," he added, 
with blundering attempts at consolation, “ the poor fel- 
low has not been to blame. As for that entanglement, 
Maitland, you must not judge it from a clerical point of 
view. The world smiles on these youthful follies. As a 
medical man in practice, it would have gone against him; 
but then, he is not yet in practice, and every one knows 
that young blood is not iced. His blunder was in deny- 
ing it. If he had but pleaded guilty, Manby would 


200 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


have let him down easily enough. Such a magnificent 
girl, t, oo ! Few men but Braxton would have dragged it 
out of her. She looked like death when she said it. 
You see, she had sworn to shield him. Fancy letting 
that out in the witness-box! ” 

“ You see,” interrupted Cyril, suddenly — for this kind 
of talk was more than he could bear — “ I am a clergyman 
and must look at these things from a clerical point of 
view.” 

Cyril's very slight evidence had not been of sufficient 
importance to be repeated at the trial; Lilian’s was, how- 
ever, deemed important from its very feebleness and the 
evident reluctance with which she gave it. Mr. Braxton 
was so very sarcastic about her reasons for disbelieving 
the evidence of her senses, that even Mr. Justice Manby, 
who was human, and touched by Lilian’s gentle and sor- 
rowful dignity — not to speak of her youth and beauty — 
threw the aegis of his office over her, and pronounced Mr. 
Braxton's observations to be irrelevant. 

The other witnesses merely repeated what has already 
been recorded, though with more detail, and all stood 
cross-examination well. Mr. Hawkshaw's endeavors to 
show that Judkins's suspicions of Everard were but the 
forgeries of jealousy, served only to fasten the imputation 
more deeply upon the accused. The feigned handwriting 
was pronounced by experts to be that of Everard; they 
relied greatly upon the formation of a capital T, which 
was made in the French manner, Everard smiled 
mournfully when he heard this. He thought of the far- 
off school-time when he and the twins had been first 
puzzled and then enchanted by their French teacher's 
T's; he thought of one wet afternoon, when they got a 
gridiron and heated it red-hot, and had a mock-masonic 
initiation, of which the house dog, Rover — swathed in a 
dressing-gown, and occasionally uttering whines of re- 
monstrance — was Grand Master; and how they vowed 
absurd vows, one of which was to be ever faithful to the 
persecuted French T. He recalled a solemn discussion at 
the end of the initiation as to the amount of guilt which 
would be incurred by either of the twins in breaking 
their vows. Cyril argued that neither of them could 
singly commit more than half a crime; and Henry replied 
that in that case neither ought singly to eat more than 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


201 


half a dinner. All this happy and guileless fooling en- 
acted itself again in Everard’s memory while his fate was 
being decided in the serious strife of the barristers,, who 
pleaded for and against his innocence, and made him feel, 
like Francesca da Rimini in hell, that <s there is no 
greater pain than remembering happy times in misery." 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

Every one felt the defence to be a mere farce, insuffi- 
cient to kindle interest, much less hope, even in the pris- 
oner. Little Rosalia Grove, the child who saw and spoke 
with Everard at Long’s farm between five and six on the 
evening of the 31st, was but five years old, and, on being 
produced in the town hall at Oldport, did nothing but 
weep bitterly and cling to her father for comfort. His 
caresses and remonstrances failed to extract anything 
from her. He could only depose that she had shown him 
a penny just given her by “ a man," when he came in to 
tea at six; that she said that the man wanted Dr. Ever- 
ard’s parcel, which she had seen her mother take to the 
Rectory. 

The appearance of Winnie Maitland’s golden curls in 
the witness-box touched people and kindled deep indigna- 
tion in the breasts of both judge and jury, who thought the 
child had been practised upon. Her first performance 
was to cry with fright, though she stated her name and 
age distinctly, and took her oath properly. She under- 
stood the nature of an oath, she said; her sister Lilian 
had explained it to her, and enjoined her to be very 
careful in what she said. On being asked what she sup- 
posed would be the consequence of her swearing carelessly, 
she replied that “ Henry would be hanged," an idea she 
had imbibed from Lennie, during many anxious consulta- 
tions wi.-h him. 

She did not know exactly at what time Everard re- 
turned to the Rectory; it was “ about tea-time." She did 
not know vhat clothes he wore; he was in a great hurry 
to go upstairs, to get ready for dinner. She told him 
there was no hurry, as it was long before dinner-time ; 


202 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


but he replied that he was not fit to go into the drawing- 
room. Cross-examined, she said he was “in a dreadful 
mess/' words used by Everard. She pleaded for “just 
one toss/' and he threw her up in the air and caught her 
several times. She did not remember striking him, or 
coming in contact with him. The hall in which the 
playing took place was not well lighted. 

All of a sudden he set her down, and said, “You have 
done it now; blinded me." She cried, and made him 
promise not to tell; she was always getting into trouble 
for rough play. He went into the kitchen, and came out 
again with raw beef. She followed him to his room, and 
he showed her some flowers, and told her to take them to 
her sister, and “not to come bothering him any more." 
She was trying so hard to play gently, and she did not 
know she touched him. His eye was very bad, but he 
did all he could to hide it, and said at dinner that he had 
knocked it against something. 

Granfer, who entered the witness-box with a vague 
notion that his conversational powers had at last a worthy 
sphere, repeated what he said at Oldport with the same 
circumlocution and affectation of stupidity, and parried 
Mr. Braxton's questions, and dealt him cutting rejoinders, 
with an apparent absence of malice that drove the court 
into ecstasies of mirth. 

Mr. Maitland and others bore witness to Everard's 
good reputation, and also to the frankness with which he 
spoke of his visits to Mrs. Lee in the spring — a circum- 
stance which the counsel for the defence maintained to 
be incompatible with Judkins's suspicions as to the pur- 
pose of those visits. 

After listening to Mr. Hawkshaw's labored, impassioned, 
but totally illogical speech for the defence, no creature in 
the court had the faintest hope for the prisoner; the only 
question now was the sentence. Yet there was one w T ho 
dared to rely upon the summing-up, and hope that Mr. 
Justice Manby would discover some technical flaw which 
might afford a loop-hole for escape. This person was 
Cyril Maitland, who had set out from the cathedral with 
such intense determination, but whose courage had failed 
him at first sight of the judge and that terrible array of 
human faces, which, to his excited imagination, seemed 
eager, with a wolfish hunger, for the shame and misery of 


THE SILENCE OF LEAN MAITLAND. 


203 


a fellow-creature. There stood his friend, pilloried before 
him, the prey of those hungry glances. Cyril's heart bled 
for him, but he felt that he could never stand there in his 
place. That Everard's head was bowed and his eyes cast 
down beneath that tempest of shame was only natural; 
who could stand before it? 

The judge's summing-up was brief, terse, and convinc- 
ing. He had merely to recapitulate the clear and undis- 
puted evidence — the plea of alibi was contradicted by 
Widow Dove's evidence; the argument that the prisoner 
was not the man whom so many witnesses had seen 
returning to the Rectory at five, but that he was at that 
moment speaking to Granfer at the wheelwright's corner, 
was quickly set aside; the evidence of the aged semi- 
imbecile creature was scarcely to be relied on against that 
of so many competent witnesses, including the one who 
had given evidence with such reluctance; the attempt 
to turn the innocence of two young children to his own 
purposes was spoken of in scathing terms; the prisoner's 
nervous and excited behavior on the evening of the 
occurrence and his garbled account of his injury and 
strenuous attempts to conceal it were pointed out; the 
jury were finally exhorted to concentrate their minds 
upon the question whether the prisoner did or did not 
kill Benjamin Lee, regardless of all other considerations, 
and to allow no thoughts of his previous unblemished 
reputation or tenderness for his rank and prospects to 
interfere with their judgment. They were to consider, 
the judge said, that although the consequences of such a 
crime were undoubtedly tenfold more terrible to one in 
the prisoner's station than to an uneducated man, yet the 
guilt of one with such advantages was tenfold greater. 

When Mr. Hawkshaw heard this, he knew that not 
only would the jury return a verdict against his client, 
but that the judge would give him a severe sentence. 
Yet Cyril hoped; he remembered that there were twelve 
men in the jury. 

But he did not wait long; a few seconds brought the 
unanimous verdict. Guilty of manslaughter — a verdict 
hailed by a quickly stifled murmur of approval from the 
crowded court. 

Like a man suddenly stabbed, Cyril sprang to his feet, 
throwing up his arms as men only do in uncontrollable 


204 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


agony, and addressed some wild words to the judge. 
“ Stop! ” he cried; “ I have evidence — important evidence. 
The prisoner is innocent! ” 

Mr. Justice Manby, who heard merely a confused out- 
cry, ordered OyriTs removal; Mr. Maitland, thinking his 
son distracted, pulled him down, and strove to quiet him; 
there was an attempt to remove him, which was met by 
promises of good behavior on the part of those around 
him; and, quiet having been procured, the judge pro- 
ceeded to give sentence in the usual form, but with some 
amplification. 

“ Henry Oswald Everard, you have been found guilty,” 
he said, “ of a very cruel and pitiless crime; whether it 
was a murder committed by deliberate and malicious 
intention or merely a homicide done in the heat of anger 
after considerable provocation is known only to yourself 
and your Maker. By the laws of your country you have 
been convicted of the lesser crime, and it is my painful 
duty to sentence you for that crime.” He went on to say 
how very painful he found that duty, and to expatiate 
upon the prisoner's advantages, the pious and refined 
home in which he was brought up, his liberal education, 
the power which his scientific knowledge gave him, the 
advantages derived from his father's honorable name and 
social standing, the manner in which he was trusted and 
admitted, a wolf in sheep's clothing, to the poor man's 
home. He spoke of the dead man's integrity, the respect 
in- which he was held by all who knew him; of his only 
child's fair fame and defenceless condition, and pointed 
out the great wickedness and cruel meanness of the pris- 
oner's conduct w r ith regard to her, and dwelt much upon 
the father's grief and just anger. He spoke also of the 
prisoner's physical advantages, his young manhood and 
muscular strength, and contrasted these with Lee's com- 
parative age and stitfness; he alluded to the murderous 
character of the stick which dealt the fatal blow r , and to 
the prisoner's anatomical knowledge which taught him 
how to deal it. Those who knew Mr. Justice Manby had 
seen him come down hard upon prisoners before, but they 
had never known him so hard. He had once given a 
wife-killer, a man who had put the climax to years of 
cruel torture by stamping a little too hard on his slave 
and killing her, five years, and people had been aghast; 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 205 

precisely similar cases in other parts of the country had 
got six weeks or a twelvemonth, or even two years. But 
recently the papers had been sarcastic upon the wife- 
beaters* short sentences and upon a prevailing tone of 
Victor Hugo sentimentality toward criminals, and Mr. 
Justice Manby had felt the righteousness of their strict- 
ures, and remembered them in dealing with Everard. “ I 
shall therefore give you,” he concluded, “the severest 
sentence which the law allows — twenty years* penal servi- 
tude.” 

The sentence fell upon Everard like a blow; he stag- 
gered under it, swerved aside, and clutched at the wood- 
work of the dock to steady himself, while hot drops 
sprang upon his brow. At the same instant, as if under 
the same blow, a cry rang through the court, and a man 
fell down senseless. It was Cyril Maitland. 

Everard lifted his head at the cry, and saw what hap- 
pened, scarcely heeding it in his agony; he saw Lilian, 
marble pale, but quiet, catch her b other in her arms, 
and that touched him with an ineffable pity for her 
through his desperate anguish. He scarcely heard the 
question if he had anything to say against his sentence, 
but, on being roused, replied in a dazed way, “ I am not 
guilty, my lord.” 

Then he was taken from his pedestal of shame, and 
led away into the terrible darkness of twenty years* 
ignominy and hopeless suffering, bereft at one stroke of 
everything, name, fame, fortune (for in those days a 
felon’s property was forfeited), love, liberty and hope. 

In a moment he saw his life as it was but yesterday, 
before Fate wove its dreadful mesh round him, a life of 
honorable and useful toil, full of noble ambition, beauti- 
ful enthusiasm, and honest striving; rich . with the 
promise of love and domestic peace; happy with friend- 
ship and family affection; adorned with culture and sci- 
entific research; and rich, above all, with trust in human 
goodness and divine mercy. He was now bereft of all, 
even of his faith. God, if there were a God, had for- 
saken him; man had betrayed and deserted him. The 
remembrance of Cyril’s almost feminine piety sickened 
his soul. He saw him kneeling before the picture of the 
Crucifixion with deadly guilt upon him; heard him lead- 
ing the simple family worship on the day when he went 


206 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


forth in treachery to take the life of a man he had 
wronged ; heard his impassioned, half-hysterical sermon 
on Innocents' Day ; saw him dealing the very Bread of 
Life to himself and Lilian ; remembered the message he 
had sent him during his detention, “ He shall make thy 
righteousness clear as the light, and thine innocence as 
the noonday ; ” and broke forth in curses on all canting 
hypocrites who make religion a cloak for evil deeds. 

And he had loved this man so well, trusted and revered 
him, fed his soul on his moral beauty. That was the 
sharpest stab in the confusion of pain that poured upon 
him. And Marion loved him, and Lilian, and the guile- 
less family at Malbourne ; and if Cyril should turn and 
repent even now at the eleventh hour, what would come 
of it but shame and misery to those he loved so tenderly? 
Should he denounce him himself — he, the convict? No ; 
that would only double the anguish of all those innocent 
hearts, and perhaps avail nothing. If he had but sus- 
pected before! but now it was too late. 

Soon he would stand in his jailer's presence, stripped 
of his very garments, no longer a man, but a thing; called 
no more by a name, but a number; beggared in mind, 
body, and soul; and a stony despair possessed him. Mr. 
Hawkshaw thought he might get five years, he told him, 
and five years, or even ten, left some small room for 
hope. After five years, youth would not be utterly gone; 
he might still bridge over the gap in his life. He might 
go to some new world and begin over again, wasted by 
imprisonment, with five precious years lost, but still 
in the prime of his faculties. But twenty years shut 
out all hope — twenty years of early manhood and 
maturity, cut off from all sources of mental activity, 
from all knowledge of the world and life, the echoes of 
whose onward rolling wheels could never reach him; 
chained to manual toil; herded with the scum and off- 
scouring of vice and misery. Supposing that he survived 
this awful fate, what could he expect to be at the 
end? 

He was glad now that none of his friends save Mr. 
Maitland and George Everard had seen him since his 
arrest. His fate was beyond the reach of sympathy or 
help; the only thing now was to keep its contamination 
to himself. He refused to take leave of any one. George 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLANB. 


207 


had irritated him by untimely exhortations, by gifts of 
tracts, and a disbelief in his innocence, or rather, a 
stubborn assumption that he was guilty on all counts, 
which astonished him beyond measure; Marion sent her 
love, and would see him “if he wished;” his father and 
two brothers were still abroad; and his married sisters 
agreed with their husbands that Henry was dead to them. 

But Mr. Maitland procured an interview after the con- 
viction, and was accompanied by Lilian. The meeting 
was brief and agonized. Lilianas marvellous self-control 
kept her outwardly calm, while the calm of utter despair 
quieted Everard. He bid her forget him, think of him as 
dead; reminded her that she had her life to live in the 
outside world ; and hoped she would open her heart to 
newer and happier affections. Lilian replied that she 
never could and never would forget the one love of her 
life; that the cruel fate which separated them for twenty 
years could not cancel the bond between them, which was 
eternal. “Besides,” she added, with a sorrowful smile, 
“ your innocence may yet be proved.” 

“ My poor Lilian,” he returned, thinking how bitter 
such a proof would be for her, “ we must not venture to 
hope for that.” 

“I shall pray for it night and day,” replied Lilian; 
“ and, in the mean time, do not forget me, Henry. 
Remember the morning in the wood, and all that you 
promised me.” 

He turned his face away, and could not speak for some 
time ; and Lilian continued in her quiet way to tell him 
how grieved Cyril would be to have missed seeing him, 
and how terribly he had suffered by his friend's calamity. 
Lilian had only left his bedside for the short time granted 
her to bid farewell to Everard, for Cyril was at death's 
door. He had not ceased raving since he recovered from 
the fainting-fit into which the passing of Everard's sen- 
tence threw him. All this Everard heard with the same 
stony calmness, which was shaken only by the ineffable 
pity he felt for Lilian. It would be better for her if 
Cyril should die, he thought, though for himself it would 
cut off the last possibility of escape from dishonor. He 
sent a tender message to Marion, thanked Mr. Maitland 
for all his kindness, and then it was time for his friends 
to go. 


208 THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 

“I shall never forget you, Henry,” Lilian said, as their 
hands were clasped in a last farewell. “ I have but one 
life and one love. Twenty years' suffering will not make 
me love you less. I can never forget you — never.” 

Lilian's firm lip quivered, as she spoke these words in a 
voice the natural music of which was enhanced by the 
deepest mingling of love and sorrow, and the quiver 
recalled to Henry's mind the pitiful trembling he had 
often seen in Cyril's mouth, the sign of a fatal inherent 
weakness of purpose. The sharpening of her features 
and the pallor consequent on mental suffering and intense 
emotion, further increased Lilian's likeness to her twin 
brother, and Everard felt his heart rent in twain by a 
tumult of conflicting feelings as he took his last long 
look at the sorrowful, beloved face. 

He could reply only by a look which haunted Lilian 
ever after, and by a closer pressure of the beautiful 
adored hand, and then he heard the doors shut with a 
dreadful heart-crushing sound behind her. 

In that moment of exquisite anguish his stony despair 
gave way, for the farewell between true lovers can never 
be all pain, and a holier though deeper agony shook his 
heart, mingled with a rush of the old pity and affection 
for his friend, and a thousand thoughts and feelings 
poignant with ioy as well as sadness, and he dropped his 
head upon his hands and cried as Englishmen, and even 
English boys, rarely cry. He never shed such tears 
again, though the time came when he would have given 
worlds for the power of such a passionate outburst. 

Lilian also broke down when the door closed upon the 
unfortunate prisoner, and wept, regardless for once of 
her father's feelings, unrestrained by the presence of the 
stolid and indifferent prison officials, to all of whom a 
woman's tears were a too-familiar* sight, until she 
regained her brother's room, and took her part in placing 
ice on his burning head, and listening to his incessant 
ravings -of battles and music and churches, and his fre- 
quent calls to Lilian to protect him from some shadowy 
and awful terror. Then Lilian would lay her hands 
gently and firmly upon him, and tell him she was there 
and nothing should hurt him; and then sometimes a dim 
glimmering of consciousness would return to his wild and 
vacant gaze for a* moment, and he would be quieter for a 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


209 


rime; till at last, after a long and weary time, one day, 
when Lilian felt that her strength was quite at an end, 
he looked up with a glance of recognition and spoke her 
name. 

Then they were told that he would live, but whether 
his reason would ever return to him depended greatly 
upon his treatment during convalescence. 

14 


f 


PART II. 


A peace above all earthly dignities, 
A still and quiet conscience.” 


CHAPTER I. 

The full glory of late summer brooded in afternoon still- 
ness over the golden harvest fields, the gray dreamy downs, 
the deep-shadowed woods, and the soft azure glimpses 
of sea around Malbourne. Everything seemed wrapped 
in rich, delicious luxury. Improvident boys revelled in 
blackberries, and stormed their friends* heavily laden 
fruit-trees; while provident squirrels watched the swell- 
ing acorns and hazel-nuts, and prepared little granaries 
for storing them when ripe. The sun had drawn the 
richest tones of color from everything — from the ruddy- 
ing apple and purpling plum; from the brown-gold corn 
and brilliant wayside flowers; from the dark-greenwoods 
and purple clover patches; from the bronzed faces and 
limbs of the laborers and children; from the cottage 
gardens, bright with scarlet-runner, vegetable marrow, 
and rich fruit. Passing down the village street, you 
could scarcely see the thatched cottages for the flowers 
about them, the gay hollyhocks standing like homely 
sentinels among the red snap-dragons, geraniums, carna- 
tions, and gillyflowers; while the Rectory grounds were 
gay with their fullest bloom, and the redspur valerian 
climbed over the low churchyard wall, and red poppies 
blazed through the corn, which stood ready for the sickle 
on the other side. 

The yellow lichens and stonecrop on the gray spire 
and tiled roof of the church glowed intensely in the 
sleepy sunshine, into which a warm haze had brought a 
ruddy tint, and the blue sky gazed, softened and dreamy, 
210 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


211 


through the same hazy veil. Down from the belfry, 
standing there in the sweet blue, fell the slow, drowsy 
chime of the three old mellow bells, and floated pleasantly 
over the quiet, basking fields, where cows stood with- 
drawn beneath the trees, chewing contentedly, with 
lazily winking eyes and whisking tails; and the horses 
fed serenely, not knowing that they would have to drag 
all that rich harvest home before long; and the little 
brook babbled faintly, because of the great heat which 
consumed it. 

Service was over, and people were straggling home 
through fields or lounging at garden gates in idleness and 
Sunday clothes, though the full male toilet was subdued 
by a tendency to shirt-sleeves. Granfer was holding 
forth to a select circle outside the low wall of the church- 
yard, where he was wont to bask in the sun, like some 
novel species of lizard, the summer long. Farmer Long 
was wending his way slowly homeward with his family, 
full of thought. He had decided to cut his first wheat- 
field, half a mile off, on the morrow, and lo! he saw that 
the corn through which they were passing was over-ripe 
and crying out for the sickle. 

Farmer Long was puzzled. He could not think why 
Providence made the corn ripe all at once, when it was 
obvious that it could not all be cut, much less carried, at 
the same time. “You may depend upon it,” his wife 
told him, “ Providence have got plenty to do without 
thinking o' your earn, Long. Cutting of it and carrying 
is our lookout. All Providence have to do is to put it 
there for us, and thankful we must be there’s any to 
cut.” Which Mr. Long reflected upon over his pipe after 
tea, not without a remote inward conviction that he 
would have made better arrangements himself. 

Sunday afternoon is the great time for sweet-hearting. 
Many a shy couple detached itself from the straggling 
parties going homeward, and wandered off through wood 
and field-paths and green lanes, for the most part silent, 
but contented, if not happy, and full of more unspoken 
poetry than the world dreams of. 

It is a melancholy time for the forsaken or scorned 
swain, who cocks his felt hat in vain, and whose bunch of 
carnation or hollyhock, jauntily stuck in his hat-band, 
avails him nothing in the eyes of the cruel fair. It was 


212 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


the hour when Charles Judkins’s misplaced passion gave 
him the most exquisite pangs; an hour which he usually 
spent in solitary brooding, chiefly by the brook-side, where 
he was wont to lean on a certain stile, shaded appropri- 
ately by willows, and “pore upon the brook that babbled 
by,” just like the unfortunate youth in Gray’s “ Elegy.” 
And let no prosaic child of culture, who has outlived the 
young days when there was nothing so sweet as the 
misery of crossed love, think scorn of our friend, or 
laugh at true love because it wears livery or top-boots. 
A garb more antipathetic to romance than that of a 
spruce groom’s livery scarcely exists, but it could not kill 
the romance in Charles Judkins’s honest breast. He was 
dreaming of what might have been but for the sin of one 
bad man. 

A pretty cottage filled his mind’s eye, a cottage with a 
porch and honeysuckle and roses, standing in a garden, 
not too far from the Swaynestone stables, with bee-hives 
and flowers, and fruit, and vegetables, all grown by him- 
self in leisure hours. Inside he dreamed a neat par- 
lor, with a clock, a sofa, and a carpet. In a low chair, 
by the window or fire according to season, he saw a beau- 
tiful woman, with rich, dark eyes which brightened at 
his step, and damask cheeks which took a deeper glow at 
his return. There she would be with her needle, busy, 
happy, honored, loving, and loved. 

Charlie’s eyes clouded so with tears that the vision van- 
ished, and only the brown brook, with its imprisoned sun- 
beams met his sorrowful gaze. But the Malbourne bells 
pealed drowsily on, as he had so often dreamed they 
would peal for his wedding, when he should issue from 
the familiar porch, the proudest and happiest of men, 
with Alma — dear Alma — in all her rich beauty, on his 
arm. 

He turned hastily away, dashing the foolish moisture 
from his honest blue eyes, and struck aimlessly along the 
footpath, thinking how her life, sorely awry as it was, 
might yet be put straight. “If I could only see her 
happy and respected again!” was his thought, as he 
strode along, consumed by no selfish grief. Presently he 
stopped at a gate, half overgrown with brier and haw- 
thorn, and saw a sight which filled him with the tender- 
est emotion. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


213 


On the other side of the brook, in a grassy corner 
between a coppice and a field of ripe wheat which rose 
upward from the banks of the little stream, was Alma 
herself, sitting on a felled tree, and watching the play of 
a child at her feet on the grass. Her shawl and bonnet 
were thrown aside, and her plain, well-fitting black dress 
showed her beautiful form to the best advantage. There 
was now a statuesque majesty about her which matched 
well with the tragedy never absent from her proud, 
defiant eyes. That habitual expression which goes so far 
toward making up the identity of a human being was so 
changed in Alma, and her features were so sharpened by 
her terrible experience of life, that to any eye but that of 
love she was no longer the same girl as she who had 
ridden home in the gray winter gloaming, happy and 
innocent, to the rustic music of the wagon-bells. 

The dark green of the coppice and the deep gold of the 
corn rising behind her gave her a picturesque background, 
while the beautiful boy playing in the grass at her feet 
made such a foreground as any artist must have loved. 
The child was dressed daintily in white, with blue rib- 
bons, and with wreaths of pink convolvolus wound about 
him. Alma had placed a bunch of scarlet poppies in 
her own dress to attract his eye, and was looking at him 
with a mournful, impassioned gaze, while he held up a 
tiny finger and bid her hark to the music of the wedding- 
bells which were ringing to honor the return of Cyril 
Maitland and his young bride to England and to Mal- 
bourne, where they arrived only the night before. 

Two springs had gathered flowers on Ben Lee’s un- 
timely grave in Malbourne churchyard, two summers 
had thrown their golden glory upon it, and the months 
which softened the hard letters on his headstone, and 
braided the turfy mound above him with mosses, had 
strengthened and developed the round limbs and brought 
intelligence to the bright eyes of the second Ben Lee, 
whose innocent life began so dolorously where his grand- 
father’s had ended tragically. 

It pleased Alma to fancy resemblances to her father in 
the infant’s sweet face, and the tenderest feeling in her 
life now was the occasional fancy that the child’s beauty 
and pretty ways might have softened her father’s heart, 
and perhaps have induced him to pardon the dishonor she 


214 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


had brought on his honest home. She dreamed of their 
going away to some new place, where they were not 
known, and where she might pass as a widow, and do her 
best to atone for the evil past. Or, at least, he might 
have loved the child, if he could not have forgiven her. 

But harder and more bitter thoughts were passing 
through Alma's mind as she sat by the brook that sunny 
afternoon, and smiled mournfully on the laughing child 
and heard his soft prattle mingled with the babbling 
brook's slow song and the lingering chime of Cyril Mait- 
land's wedding-bells. 

She was thinking how she would like to go away, far 
away to some unfamiliar land, where her sin and sorrow 
were unknown, and where she might begin life afresh, 
and earn a good name and honorable up-bringing for her 
son. Her step-mother had, as she expressed it, washed 
her hands of her after her father's death, and she lived 
alone in a humble cottage lodging, trying to earn her 
bread by her needle, or, indeed, by any industry that lay 
within her power, and hoping in time to live down her 
reproach. 

But it was not so easy to get work in Malbourne. All 
classes shunned her;- even the gentle Rector, who would 
otherwise have given her a helping hand, could not over- 
come his horror of the woman who had betrayed Henry 
Everard to so terrible a fate, and wished her away from 
his parish, offering, indeed, to help her, if she would but 

go- 

Still Alma clung to the spot which held her parents’ 
graves, and fought manfully against the wall of prejudice 
which rose around her, eating the bread of tears and bit- 
ter humiliation in secret, though she met the averted 
faces or contemptuous words of her former friends with 
heroic calm in public, but got scarcely any work. Ben 
Lee had put by a considerable sum of money for one in 
his station, and this was divided by his will between his 
wife and his daughter. Upon this little capital Alma 
had been living, till she woke to the mournful conviction 
that there was no bread for her to win in Malbourne, and 
also that a day would soon come when her patrimony 
would be exhausted. 

Money found its way mysteriously to her cottage — 
money from a source well known to her — for the child's 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


215 


support; but Alma scorned to use it, and, being unable 
to return it without betraying the giver, put it aside for 
the infant’s use in case of her death or any emergency. 
Like most women of any force of character, who are 
thrown on their own resources, after a time she began to 
realize how feeble a being one woman is against a world 
of strong men and iron prejudices and cruel convictions. 
She could defy the world, but she could not conquer it. 
She was too ignorant to quarrel with the social arrange- 
ments which handicap the weakness of sex with extra 
weights, and brand its errors as crimes, but a dim sense 
of injustice struggled within her and still further con- 
fused the moral perceptions already confused by error 
and crime. 

She knew she could not expect Heaven’s aid, with the 
crime of unrepented perjury upon her soul; but before the 
heavy hour when she stood in the sight of God and man 
and swore away the honor and liberty of an innocent 
man, she had had gleams of penitence, when she had 
hoped to make her peace with Heaven, and lead a holy 
life. After that further plunge into crime, she could 
hope for no mercy unless she undid her dreadful deed. 

But though Alma went to church and prayed for the 
helpless child, who could not pray for himself, and hoped 
at least to place his little feet on the heavenward road, 
she thought daily less of heaven, and was fast sinking 
into the dreadful practical atheism to which sin lead^ — 
the atheism which, because it sins on unavenged, cries, 
“Tush! God doth not regard/’ and finally blots the 
Maker out of the universe altogether. 

Alas, poor Alma! she was made for a nobJ >r destiny, 
and her honest lover, seeing her there, with her mournful 
gaze and heroic heauty, felt his heart thrill with a vague 
sense that, in spite of her frailty, she was not unworthy 
of his passionate adoration. His heart told him what his 
untutored mind never could, that hers vas no common 
frailty, but the lapse of an exceptionally noble nature led 
astray, and all his hope was to set her up again on the 
pedestal whence a villain’s arts had hv iled her. 

So absorbed was she in melancho) / musing, that for a 
long time she did not observe him, and he enjoyed a pen- 
sive rapture in the mere sense o'i her presence and the 
sight of her tragic beauty, so well set off by the glowing 


216 


TEE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


hues of the golden corn, with the poppies blazing through 
it, by the dark wood, and by the bright appearance of the 
pretty child in his ribbons and flowers. He would have 
liked some enchanter to fix them there forever, while the 
child and the brook babbled, the bees hummed, the grass- 
hopper uttered his shrill note of joy, and the bells pealed 
on from the hidden tower. He watched the changes of 
her face with compassionate yearning; he saw the pain 
deepen in it. She was thinking of that morning's expe- 
rience. 

She had been on her way to church as usual, a soli- 
tary figure in the straggling crowd of friends and neigh- 
bors, when those in front of her pressed back from the 
lych-gate to let a group of gentlefolk pass, and Alma 
found herself one of a little line of church-goers, with 
whom they exchanged greetings. Mrs. Maitland and 
Lilian came first, then Cyril and Marion, lastly the chil- 
dren. Alma made her courtesy with her usual proud 
humility, looking her superiors in the face with haughty 
calm. 

Cyril recognized his old friends with the glances which 
he knew so well how to distribute, missing Alma's face 
with the ease and naturalness of good breeding; but 
Marion’s eye lighted on the beautiful face of the ruined 
girl, and Alma never forgot the hot flash of shame and 
the start of shuddering aversion with which she turned to 
her husband, pressing close to his side as if for protection, 
or the exquisite tenderness of the look Cyril gave her, as 
he returned the pressure on his arm, and quickened his 
pace to lead Marion away from the sight which so dis- 
tressed her. The burning blood sprang to Alma's face, 
her temples throbbed wildly, and in the tumult of mingled 
passion which convulsed her, the impulse of a tigerish fury 
surged up, and bade her rush before Marion's face, and 
hurl her to the ground with one blast of truth shouted out 
in the ears of the little public standing near. 

In five words she could bring Marion's pride forever to 
the dust, and blight all the happiness of her life. But 
the impulse sank amid the roar of other passions, and 
Alma remained outwardly quiet, passing sedately up the 
churchyard path among the others, into the cool, hushed 
church, where the words of benediction and hope sounded 
in vain for her. 


TEE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


217 


The poignant memory of Marion's look made her eyes 
flash and her bosom heave in the sunny stillness by the 
brookside, and with a deep sigh and a gesture of pain 
she looked up and met poor Charlie's adoring gaze. 

In a moment, the gate on which he leaned was cleared, 
the bit of meadow crossed, the brook leaped, and he 
stood before her, joyously welcomed by the child, who 
had too few friends not to appreciate this one, to whom 
he owed many a toy and cake and still more welcome 
game of play. 

“Alma," Judkins cried, taking off his hat that the 
child might play with its gold band, “ dear, dear Alma, 
it cuts into my heart to see you looking so sorrow- 
ful." 

“Never mind me, Charlie," she replied, with a wan 
smile. “ I brought it all on myself, and no one can help 
me. Go away, please; it will do neither of us any good 
to be seen together." 

“One minute, Alma,'’ he protested; “let me speak 
out once more. I love you so true, Alma, so true; I can't 
give you up. Let bygones be bygones, and do you try 
to care for me. It's what your poor father always wished, 
my dear, and what might have been, if villains — It's 
bygones, Alma, bygones, and can't be helped any way 
now; but you med have taken me in time, if tfiat hadn't 
come between us, and you med be happy yet. I'll be a 
good husband; I'll be a father to that innocent child 
that is fond of me already. In another place nobody 
need know he isn't mine, and I'll never bring up the 
past agen you — never. There's a many have begun life 
similar and no trouble between them." 

“ It would be wronging you, Charlie," replied Alma; 
“you are too good for the like of me. I could never care 
for you as a wife ought. I loved too true once, and I can 
never love any more. We are only young once, and we 
can only love once," she said, expressing Lilian's thought 
in other words. “No, Charles, I mustn't take advantage 
of you; you must go and forget me." 

“Look here, Alma! that's true about only loving once; 
and do you think, if I couldn’t forget you after what has 
come between us, I ever could now? No, my dear. I 
love you true, and ever shall, and all I want is to make 
you happy, that has been wronged." / 


218 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


Alma burst into tears, and bid him not think too well 
of her, for that she had grievously sinned. 

“ And if we are only young once, you are still young/’ 
he continued; “ you have a deal of life yet^ to live, and 
no soul to look to but me. And he is as good as dead, 
and that makes a difference. Take me, Alma, and you’ll 
maybe get fonder of me than you think. Consider the 
child, too. You’ll never get work in Malbourne; and 
how’ll you get it where you are not known? ” 

Alma was crying bitterly; he had never seen her in so 
accessible a mood before. 

“ I mean to go away,” she sobbed. 

Then Judkins unfolded his cherished project before 
her. “Come right away with me, my dear; come to 
America, where we can begin over again fresh, and no 
soul to cast anything up against us; and you may be 
happy and honored — ay, and more thought of than people 
so humble as us can ever hope to be in the old country. 
I’ve a sister there, out West, married, and went out four 
years ago; and they are rich people now, with more land 
,of their own than Sir Lionel ever had, and all their own 
doing. There’s land to be got almost for the asking, and 
nothing wanting but a pair of stout hands to make it cov- 
ered with crops such as never grow in poor old England. 
Think, my dear, if this corn-field here and half a dozen 
more was all ours, and we married, with a comfortable 
house and horses and garden, and our own wood to burn, 
and cattle and poultry, besides the wild game to feed us, 
and nothing known agen us, how happy we might be! 
My sister’s husband, he’s a great man out there, and a 
precious poor chap he was here, to be sure. Little Benjy 
would thrive out in the woods, and grow up to have land 
of his own, and never know but I was his father. And 
he should share equal with others as might be sent us, he 
should. I never do nothing by halves, Alma; and if I 
said that boy was my son, my son he should be, you may 
depend upon it. I’ve spoken to Sir Lionel about it, and 
he has wrote to several that manage about ships and 
expenses and all that ; and I’ve a tidy bit of money put 
by, and my sister, she writes every year, and recommends 
me to come out West; and there’s no tie to keep me here, 
and you’ve only to say the word, and we’d have the banns 
up next Sunday; and I’d give warning to-morrow, for I’m 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


219 


tired of service, though Sir Lionel's is the best, and ready 
to leave the land where I've seen so much trouble, and 
we'd be married, and may be started from Liverpool this 
day five weeks. Alma dear, I can't go and leave you; 
and you wouldn't blight my prospects and keep me back 
— ay, and the child — from making my fortune, would 
you?" 

“ You are a good man Charles Judkins," replied Alma, 
drying her eyes; “ you deserve better than to be ham- 
pered with such as me. You might find a good girl out 
there you could marry." 

There was a wistful look in Alma's eyes, that embold- 
ened Judkins to paint their future in still more glowing 
terms, and urge his suit more ardently than ever; and 
the end was that, when they strolled slowly back toward 
Alma's cottage in the ruddying sunshine, a bunch of 
white stephanotis and maidenhair from the Swaynestone 
conservatories had strayed from Charlie's coat to Alma's 
black dress, and Alma's scarlet poppies drooped in glowing 
languor on the young fellow's honest breast, while the 
boy's bright head lay sleeping on his arm. 

The bells had ceased now, and the swallows were sweep- 
ing round the gray belfry, bathed in sunlight, and utter- 
ing their peculiar twitter. Wider and wider grew the 
circles they made, now in search of prey, now in 3nase of 
each other, now in mere delight in airy motion, over the 
Rectory roof and across the lawn, where a pleasant group 
was gathered, to one of whom their sunny breasts and 
curving flight brought sorrowful thoughts of a lonely 
prisoner, for whom she had translated Grossi's exquisite 
“ Rondinella Pellegrina" long ago. 

“ Oh se anch ’io ! ma lo contends 
Questa bassa angusta volta, 

Dove ’1 sole non risplende, 

Dove ’1 aria ancor m’e tolta, 

Dondea te la mia favella 
Giunge appena, oh, rondinella! ” 

she was murmuring inwardly, as her glance followed the 
birds of happy liberty in their graceful gyrations against 
the lucid sky. 

Lilian was making tea at a rustic table beneath the lin- 
dens on the lawn; Mrs. Maitland lay on a couch near her; 
Marion reclined in a low-slung hammock, with one slen- 


m 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


der foot touching the turf as she swayed to and fro; Cyril 
lounged in a low garden chair close at hand, very much at 
nis ease, yet ready to hold her cup and plate, and do her 
bidding; Mr. Maitland, placid and revelling in the thought 
that he need preach no more for a week, had another gar- 
den lounge, and asked for his third cup of tea; Lennie lay 
on his back, staring at the sky, with one leg crossed over 
the other, and pointing heavenward; while Winnie's golden 
curls were straying over the shoulder of Ingram Swayne- 
stone, who sat near Lilian, and held the child leaning 
against him, encircled by one arm, while he watched the 
graceful movements of the tea-maker, and delighted in the 
slim beauty of her hands. 

Some stone fruit and a cluster of purple and one of 
white grapes on the tea-table made a splendid centre of 
color beneath the golden green of the sunlit lindens. It 
was a sweet and happy scene, peaceful, contented, and 
free, very different from the solitary prison-cell which the 
swallows suggested to Lilian's imagination. They had 
been talking as people talk over tea-tables; Cyril had given 
some droll accounts of things which had amused him in 
his recent travels. There had been happy laughter and 
jesting, and now a pleasant silence, which no one wished 
to break, had fallen on the little party. 

Then it was that Winnie had one of her startling visita- 
tions of thoughtfulness, and burst out as follows, in her 
clear, high treble: “Papa, I wonder how Alma Lee likes 
having to go to hell ? " 

“My dear little girl, what are you talking about?" 
returned the gentle Rector, startled out of his peaceful 
day-dream. 

“Well, you see, she must go there," protested Winnie, 
with deep earnestness; “ it can't be helped now she has 
broken two commandments — the third and the ninth." 

“Hush, dear!" said Lilian; “you must not talk of 
such things. Besides, let us hope poor Alma repents." 

“How can she repent with poor Henry still in prison ?" 
demanded Winnie, fiercely lifting her head and tossing 
back her golden mane. 

“We must, at least, hope that poor Alma will repent 
before she comes to die, dear," said Mr. Maitland; “but it 
is not for any one, least of all one so young as you, to judge 
her. But you may pray for her." 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


221 


“ Besides,” added Mrs. Maitland, “we do not know 
that Alma has broken those commandments. " 

“ Oh, don't we, though! " cried Lennie, throwing him- 
self round to face his mother; “when she told all those 
lies about Henry and his gray suit. Why, Henry changed 
his clothes before lunch, because he got them dirty walk- 
ing with Lilian." 

“ If Henry changed his clothes before luncheon, Len- 
nie," said Cyril, quietly, “why did you not say so at the 
time?" 

“Lennie's memory is scarcely to be trusted after so 
great a lapse of time," said his father. “ He probably 
thought the circumstance possible and desirable, and then 
came to accept it unconsciously as a fact. Moreover, is 
it probable that such a circumstance would escape every 
one's notice but Lennie's?" 

“Dear father," interposed Lilian, “can you recall 
what Henry wore on that fatal day? I never could; 
there is so little variety in gentlemen's dress. Did 
Marion remember?" 

Marion was crying at the memory of those harrowing 
events. “ I remember perfectly," she replied, “ that 
Henry wore a black coat at luncheon that day. He got 
some mustard on the cuff, and I helped him take it 
off." 

“Why did you never say so?" cried Lilian. “Oh, 
Marion, you and Lennie might have saved him! " 

“You are very cruel, Lilian, to say such a thing!" 
returned Cyril, with an angry flash in his blue eyes. 
“ Henry’s dress at luncheon would have proved nothing 
with regard to his subsequent dress, although it is plain 
enough to us that he would not have changed again. 
You should not put such harrowing thoughts into Marion's 
mind. I thought, too, that this painful theme was not 
to be discussed." 

“ Well, Alma will have to go to hell all the same," 
returned Lennie, with conviction. “I don't care," he 
added, on being rebuked by Cyril for his sweeping judg- 
ment and strong language; “it's in the Bible about liars 
having their part in fire and brimstone, and with all your 
preaching you can't preach it out." 

Cyril pressed his hand to his side with the old gesture, 
and a low moan escaped him. His face was gray with 


222 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


pain, and the drops of anguish stood on his brow. “ I 
cannot bear this,” he gasped. 

“My poor boy!” sighed Mr. Maitland; “we have 
been too cruel in reopening this deadly wound. Come 
with me. Come, Marion, dry your eyes. I want to show 
you my bees, real Ligurians; and you must tell me, both 
of you, what you think of my hives.” 

They strolled away accordingly, leaving the remainder 
of the tea-party, and particularly the youthful preacher, 
Lennie, aghast. 

“ Mrs. Maitland,” asked Ingram Swaynestone, who 
had by no means enjoyed this unexpected airing of the 
family skeleton, “when are you going to muzzle this 
brat?” 


CHAPTER II. 

J ust then a lusty baritone voice was heard in the lane, 
which was sunk out of sight between the Rectory and 
Northover grounds, singing joyously — 

“ Maxwelton braes are bonnie, 

Where early fa’s the dew, 

And ’tis there that Annie Laurie 
Gied me her promise true— 

Gied me her promise true, 

Which ne’er forgot will be ; 

And for bonnie Annie Laurie 
I’d lay me doon and dee.” 

“Catch him deeing,” observed Ingram, sarcastically. 

“A precious rum song for a Sunday,” added Lennie, 
whose virtuous frame of mind was rather trying in its 
intensity. 

“ Pd lay me doon and dee,” sang the unconscious min- 
strel at the very top of his compass. 

“No, you wouldn't,” Lennie shouted. 

Then they walked across the lawn, peeped over the 
hedge, and saw Judkins stepping gayly homeward with 
Alma’s scarlet poppies in his coat. Judkins looked up, 
startled, and stopped, blushing, in the emission of his 
highest note. 

“ I beg your pardon, Mr. Swaynestone,” he replied, re- 
spectfully saluting; “but indeed I would.” 


THE SILENCE OF LEAN MAITLAND. 


223 


“Well, I think you would, Judkins, you foolish fel- 
low,” returned Ingram, laughing. “ What is the mean- 
ing of this festive cheer, may I ask? Why rouse the 
echoes of Melbourne with the sounds of riot and mirth? ” 

“ Sir,” replied Judkins, “I'm engaged to be married. 
To-morrow I give warning, and in five weeks* time I 
hope to sail for America.” 

“Let me recover, Lennie,” said Ingram, after having 
congratulated the fortunate swain, and sent him on his 
way. “ And look here, young one, not a word of this to 
any one. And please to remember that tragedies are 
not discussed over tea-pots, and ladies are not supposed 
to know anything unpleasant, and, above all, that people 
never publicly allude to their relations when in jail.” 

“'Twasn't me; *twas Win began it,” growled Lennie. 
“ Besides, you are nobody. You are always here at tea- 
time. You are going in for Lilian, it's my belief. You 
do nothing but stare at her like a great gawk.” 

“ You are a promising young party, upon my word,” 
observed Ingram, picking him up by the jacket-collar. 
“ Marvyn should whip you more.” 

So saying, he carried the struggling boy back to the 
tea-drinkers and deposited him in the fork of a tree, 
where he bid him remain, under pain of chastisement, 
while he and Winnie aimed handkerchiefs and other 
missiles at him, unmindful for a moment of Alma Lee's 
affairs. 

Lilian was trying to get Mark Antony to accept a 
saucer of cream, on which the haughty favorite perpetu- 
ally turned his back, or rather tail, with cool disdain; 
while Snip and Snap watched it with eager eyes, know- 
ing that Mark's final rejection of the dainty would con- 
sign it to them. 

“ There are moments,” said Ingram, who watched the 
scene with a sort of impatient interest, “when a man 
might envy a cat.” 

Lilian assured him that there was plenty of cream in the 
dairy, if he would like some; and Mr. Maitland and 
Marion returned — the latter still looking troubled — when 
it became painfully apparent to Mr. Swaynestone that he 
had already lingered longer in the family circle than he 
should have done and he regretfully took his leave. 

Lilian looked after him with a half-pained gaze as he 


224 THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND 

went to the gate, accompanied by her father; then she 
returned to Marion. “ Where is Cyril?” she asked. 

“It is his hour for private devotion,” she replied, speak- 
ing in a voice intended only for Mrs. Maitland and Lilian, 
the children having set off down the drive to bid their 
playfellow another good-bye. “ I sometimes wish,” she 
added, with a sigh, “ that Cyril were not quite so devout.” 

“ Dear child, that is a bad wish,” rebuked Mrs. Mait- 
land. 

“He will be upset for at least a day,” continued 
Marion, abstractedly, “and will see none of us. He is 
still so sensitive ; the least reference to my poor brother 
invariably has this effect. I was the last transgressor,” 
continued Marion, with a sorrowful smile. “It was at 
Chillon. When we were in that dreadful crypt by Bonni- 
vard’s pillar, somebody began to quote Byron’s ‘ Prisoner’ 
— some tiresome tourist. I could not help it, Lilian, but 
the thought of being shut up all those years; the thought 
that Henry, who read those Tery lines so unthinkingly on 
that fatal day, as you told me, was actually suffering — 
Oh, dear!” added Marion, checking a sob. “I turned 
and asked Cyril to take me away from that dreadful 
place. Heaven knows what I said. Something about 
my unfortunate brother, I suppose. Well, Cyril fainted. 
He told me then that I must never speak of him.” 

“ He will grow less sensitive as his health improves and 
his happiness becomes more habitual.” Mrs. Maitland 
said, trying to soothe the agitated girl. 

“ It would be more manly in Cyril, and far better for 
him, if he would but accept the fact, and make up his 
mind to meet it bravely,” said Lilian. “ He cannot go 
on in this way; his long illness has spoiled him. I must 
speak to him — ” 

“Oh, Lilian! ” interposed Marion, “pray don’t speak 
to him! He can’t bear it, indeed. You will only make 
matters far worse, indeed — indeed! You think you 
understand Cyril, but you are mistaken. You are not 
his wife. I have been his wife only two months, but I 
know more about him than I ever knew of any human 
being before.” 

And the knowledge had taken the careless gayety 
from Marion’s manner and the youthful ring from her 
laughter^ It was not without reason that she vaunted 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


225 


her fresh matronly dignity, and said, with half-sad play- 
fulness, “I am older than you now, Lilian — years, years 
older." 

“ We must bear with dear Cyril," said Mr. Maitland, 
who had joined them. “ Suffering of unusual severity 
has been laid upon him, his whole life has received a 
shock, and we must remember that we saved his reason 
only as by a miracle. Even now his mind is not firmly 
balanced. Marion must heal that mind as only she can. 
But Cyril will bear the scars of this furnace all his life, 
poor lad. We must not marvel that he is changed." 

Every one recognized the fierceness of the furnace 
through which Cyril had passed, leaving his youth be- 
hind, and yet it never struck people that the blow was 
naturally more severe to Lilian. Even Mr. Maitland, 
with the memory of Lilian’s passionate outburst when 
she confided the story of Everard’s love to him, did not 
reflect that it makes a greater shipwreck of life to lose a 
lover than a friend. The tragedy of Cyril’s youth threw 
an additional glamour over him for the remainder of his 
life ; his deep friendship and the sensitiveness which 
made him grieve to the point of losing his reason and 
almost his life over a brother’s shame invested him with 
a romantic interest which never faded. It was whispered 
about in after years, with various modifications and addi- 
tions, but always to Cyril’s credit, long after the trial and 
the catastrophe to the Everards was forgotten. 

The illness with which Cyril had been stricken on 
hearing Everard’s terrible doom left its marks on him 
for life. No one could say ho\y he was changed, but it 
was certain that he was never the same man again. Dur- 
ing the slow process of recovery, he was for months like 
a child in intellect, living only for trifles, laughing at a 
mere nothing, speaking only as a child speaks, reading 
nothing but the lightest literature, and preferring that 
specially consecrated to boys’ amusement, and above all, 
strictly forbidden to approach any painful topic in 
thought or speech. 

The day that saw him out of danger saw Lilian on a 
bed of sickness, from which she arose almost as weak as 
Cyril. The twins made their convalescence together, 
Lilian outstripping her brother in their progress toward 
health, and their physical weakness — especially Cyril’s, 
15 


226 THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 

which was excessive — made it easy for them to avoid 
mental exertion. They were told to lead an animal life, 
and they became boy and girl at holiday once more. 

For months neither of them breathed Henry's name, or 
alluded to the events which had ended so tragically for 
him. Gradually Cyril's reason, the delicate chords of 
which had been so cruelly strained, resumed its natural 
tone, and Lilian, who watched him like a mother, 
supplied his intellect from day to day with stronger food. 
First she had occupied his vacant moments with manual 
employments — wood-carving, painting, and even needle- 
work, which he executed in the early days, while she read 
to him. Then she advanced him to gardening and the 
tending of pet animals, and singing with her ; thence to 
an interest in public affairs. As he progressed, and 
began to talk calmly and seriously, she extended his read- 
ing, took him back to old favorite classic authors, and got 
him to translate these and modern poets into English 
verse, for which he had a graceful knack ; and one day 
when he brought her a fresh copy of original verses, she 
felt that her patient was healed, and determined to send 
him away from her. 

“You have saved his intellect," his physician said, 
when she showed him the verses, “and I must confess 
that I had very little hope of such a consummation. No 
one with a less intimate knowledge of your brother's 
character could have done what you have done. You 
have in so doing saved a remarkably fine, if delicate, 
mental organization." 

Then Cyril travelled for some months in Greece, Egypt 
and Syria — countries particularly interesting to one of 
his temperament and education. He revelled in the 
poetic and historic associations of the ancient homes of 
letters and arts, and poured out his soul in devotional 
ecstasy on the hallowed soil of Jerusalem and Nazareth. 
He also wrote a poem, called “ The Knight of Expia- 
tion," in blank verse. 

The “ knight," it appeared, was visited by one of 
those unlucky excesses of virtue which the vulgar call 
crimes, and for which public opinion usually exacts the 
reparation of hanging in these prosaic days. The nature 
of this virtuous excess was discreetly left to the reader's 
imagination, a, la Byron , and was thus as horrible as the 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


227 


most fastidious taste could desire. (Lennie inclined to the 
opinion that the knight had boiled his grandmother, and 
played dice with her bones, besides practising the black art. ) 

The furies of conscience having seized upon this un- 
lucky victim of social prejudices, as M. Hugo et Cie, call 
criminals, he put on a hair shirt, and went to the Holy 
Land to do penance at its shrines, and returned to his 
native shores to be canonized. This plot afforded fine 
scope for Cyril's descriptive and topographical powers, 
and admitted of a beautiful account of the knight's feel- 
ings on first seeing Jerusalem, which would have been 
more generally admired if it had not reminded people so 
strongly of a similar passage in Tasso. The character of 
the knight had unfortunately been anticipated by Byron 
in “ Childe Harold." Nevertheless, the pretty volume, 
called “ The Knight's Expiation, and other Poems," wa& 
greatly admired, if not purchased. 

Marion had seen Cyril frequently during his convales- 
cence, and had only parted with him at the beginning of 
his tour; and in the second June after his illness, her 
father took her to Paris, where Cyril met her, and was 
quietly married to her. The young couple passed a brief 
paradise in Switzerland, and then went home to -Mal- 
bourne, whence, after a few days’ sojourn, they were to go 
to Cyril's fresh curacy in the west of London. The twins 
had, however, been parted since the time when Lilian 
finished her pious task of rescuing her brother's intellect 
from the shipwreck which threatened it. 

They had met again but four-and-twenty hours since, 
yet Lilian knew their old close relationship was at an end 
forever. An insurmountable barrier had risen up 
between them. This, she told herself, was but in the 
natural course of things; the peculiar bond of twinship, 
strengthened as it had accidentally been by the circum- 
stances of Cyril's terrible illness, could not be expected 
to outlive early youth. Her brother had now found other 
ties; he was tasting the fulness of life. The old childish 
associations must fade in the full stress of manhood, and 
they must now be only as brothers and sisters commonly 
are. It was only natural, and yet it grieved Lilian with 
an unspeakable grief. In the sore trouble which had 
fallen on her, she needed her brother's closeHriendsnip as 
she never had done before. 


228 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


As Marion had predicted, they saw nothing more of 
Cyril that night; but the next day he appeared among 
them with a cloudless brow, and set them all laughing 
with his droll ancedotes and observations, the drollery of 
which was so greatly enhanced by his grave face and 
almost pathetic voice. He never laughed, and only rarely 
smiled, and although his very smile was sad, it was as 
sweet as only rare smiles are. One of those smiles was 
sufficient to win a friend for life, as he well knew. There 
had been a time when he was wont to laugh as happily 
and heartily as only young manhood can. 

There was a great croquet tournament that afternoon 
at Mr. Marvyn's, and there the Maitlands, the younger 
Garretts and Swaynestones . assembled, to measure their 
powers one against the other with all the serious ardor 
which the pursuit of croquet in the palmy days of its 
youth exacted. 

Will no bard arise to pour forth lyric song in honor of 
that noble but now extinct pastime? Can no historian be 
found to chronicle the decline and fall of croquet? It 
descended, like other gifts of Heaven, unexpectedly from 
some far celestial eminence, and took captive the hearts 
of the sons, and still more of the daughters, of men, at 
one stroke. In those who were young at that golden 
period, the peculiar sharp yet dull click of the balls still 
awakes a thrilling combination of delicious and romantic 
feelings, as it is evoked by the hand of some careless 
child, who has routed out the dusty mallets and balls 
from some forgotten corner, and imagines himself a 
new Columbus in consequence. 

Mr. Marvyn, who, it will be remembered, was curate of 
Malbourne and tutor to the young Maitlands in succes- 
sion, had been very severely bitten by the croquet mania. 
He had ruthlessly levelled his wife's flower-beds to make a 
fitting ground for the noble pastime, and this he mowed 
and rolled and watered himself, and upon this he permit- 
ted no unlicensed foot to stray. 

When the players arrived, they found every hoop and 
stick exactly placed, after careful and accurate measure- 
ment, on a lawn newly shaven and tested by a spirit-level, 
and a host and hostess too much burdened with the 
responsibility of reading the new club rules to go through 
the conventional forms of welcome. 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


229 


An interlude of tea was grudgingly acquiesced in; and 
Mr. Marvyn, laying aside his own favorite mallet with a 
deep sigh, and carefully noting the position of each player 
in his pocket-book, followed his guests to some tables in 
the shade of two fine elms, and, taking a chair by Mrs. 
Cyril Maitland, began to scold her seriously for the blun- 
ders she had made, and laughed at, which was worse, 
while playing on his side. But there were some people, 
and among them Ingram Swaynestone, who took his tea 
on the grass at Lilian’s feet, who thought the tea inter- 
lude by no means the least agreeable part of the tourna- 
ment, an] responded with little alacrity to Mr. Marvyn’s 
summons to continue the combat. 

Night fell all too soon upon the eager contest, and the 
light of the mellow August moon was supplemented by 
that of two carriage-lamps, which were carried from hoop 
to hoop, to the great distraction of nervous people; while 
the less-ardent players, resigning their balls to others, 
joined the non-combatants in the drawing-room, and 
yielded themselves to the frivolity of conversation and 
music. 

“ Poets are made of precious queer stuff,” Ingram 
Swaynestone observed to Lilian, as they stood on the 
lawn, waiting their turn to play, and listened to a song 
which Miss Swaynestone was singing. “Now, what 
could have put that notion into Cyril’s head? I’m sure 
he never left off loving anybody.” 

The song which Cyril had written, and which had been 
daintily set by an Austrian student he met in his travels, 
was as follows: — 

“ When I began to love you, 

‘Twas like the beginning of June, 

Like the dewy birth of the morning 
Or the swell of the first lark’s tune 


“ All grew so bright, so gracious, 

So full of mystery sweet, 

Such a deep and dear enchantment 
Had bound me, hands and feet. 

“ But when I finished to love you, 

’Twas like the closing of night, 
When November’s gloaming is sheeted 
In rain-clouds falling light. 


230 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


“Ah! when I finished to love you, 

I finished with all things bright, 
And I saw a dark grave yawning 
To hide my heart in its night.” 


Lilian knew that Cyril had written it at the time of his 
estrangement from Marion, who was listening to it now 
with great enjoyment, unconscious that she was the 
heroine of it; but she only said that poets were sup- 
posed to feel all the emotions of which the human breast 
is capable, and Ingram was about to make some rejoinder, 
when the reiterated cry of “ Blue to play! " at last aroused 
his attention, and he reluctantly obeyed the summons. 

But when the game was at last ended, and they found 
themselves going home in the moonlight across the few 
fields, and through the dewy lane which lay between the 
curate's dwelling and the rector's, Ingram contrived that 
Lilian should linger behind with him, so that there was 
no chance of interruption. The words of Cyril's song 
echoed in his ears: — 

“ Such a deep and dear enchantment 
Had bound me, hands and feet.” 

“1 cannot break the spell, Lilian," he said, “and I 
do not think it well to try any more. My father sees it 
at last, and, though at one time he wished me to look for 
rank and fortune, he now thinks I cannot do better than 
follow my heart." 

“ Dear Ingram," replied Lilian, pausing at a gate, over 
which they saw the village sleeping in the moonlight, “I 
would have spared you this. I thought I had been 
explicit enough." 

“You were explicit enough ; I quite understood that I 
was refused. But, dearest Lilian, you cannot imagine 
how earnestly and truly I love you," he continued, his 
face flushing beneath its brown with deep and serious 
feeling. “ I know well how unworthy I am of you. I 
have not been a good man ; I was not like Cyril. I did 
as others do. But, dearest Lilian, ever since the happy 
day, long ago now, when I found that I loved you, f when 
I began to love you,' as Cyril's song says, it was indeed 
like the beginning of June — everything was new. I woke 
up to loathe all those things in my life that were unworthy 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


231 


of you ; I set to work to sweep them all away, and do 
better. I am not good for much even now, I know well ; 
but if there is any good in me at all, if I am not a mere 
unscrupulous man of pleasure, if I have any higher 
aspirations, if I try to do my duty in my small way, it is 
all owing to you." 

“No, Ingram," returned Lilian, looking into the 
honest, manly face, which was alight with unwonted 
fervor; “you are wrong, believe me. It is not due to me, 
but to your own good and true nature, which only needed 
the touch of love — which you must give one day, not to 
me, but to some better, more suitable woman — to show 
you the real meaning of life. Believe me, Ingram, men 
are not so dependent on women. Do not give in to the 
conventional fiction of making your better self depend on 
anything so uncertain as the will and liking of one weaker 
than yourself. The moral nature of men is stronger than 
that of women. We all want something to lean upon. 
Do not make pillars of us. Do you think any woman 
could love one she believed her inferior?" 

“ I hope and trust so," said Ingram, with a little smile. 
“ Without that there would be little chance of happiness 
for me and many another poor fellow. Dear Lilian, try 
to love me. How can I live without you? " 

“ I thought we were to be friends," replied Lilian, with 
a sigh and a regretful intonation of her beautiful voice. 

It was like the most exquisite music to Ingram’s ear; it 
seemed to take his soul captive and surround him with 
the purest delight. Merely to hear her discoursing on 
every-day themes to others, filled him with a sense of 
delicious perfection which no cares could distract. 

“We must be something more than friends," he said, 
“ when the very sound of your voice stirs every fibre 
within me." 

“We can never be more than friends; it is not in my 
power," she replied, quickly and with agitation. 

Ingram looked at her pale, pure face with a startled 
glance, and saw that tears were fast gathering in her eyes. 
Was there some hidden trouble in her serene and lovely 
life ? He could not think it. She had outlived the pain 
and annoyance of her old playmate’s ruin; she had 
received her brother back from the very jaws of death; 
all was fair and pleasant around her. Her step was light 


232 THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 

as only that of health and young happiness can be; her 
laughter had the most joyous ring of any he ever heard ; 
she was always bright and full of pleasant thoughts and 
airy suggestions. No; it was not possible that sorrow 
could have a home in her heart. He looked silently and 
searchingly at the figure by his side. 

She was of more ethereal mold than she had been in 
earlier days; and her features,, losing the soft, joyous 
curves of youth, had fined into that perfect purity of out- 
line which in her brother seemed austerity, but in her 
suggested spirit-like sweetness. The twins’ faces had 
been cast in the very same mold, only the lips were fuller 
and firmer in the sister, and she lacked the squareness 
visible in her brother’s jaw. For the first time, Ingram 
asked himself the question people never asked when under 
the spell of Lilian’s glances — Had she beauty ? And his 
answer was in the affirmative. 

“ Dear Lilian,” he said, “ it is in your power to try to 
love me.” 

Lilian shook her head. “ Do you remember the day 
of Ben Lee’s death?” she asked. “ Henry Everard 
and I were in Temple Copse at mid-day when Long’s 
wagon was passing. It was then ” — Lilian faltered, and 
her lip trembled a little — “ that we became engaged.” 

Ingram was not wholly unprepared for this, and said 
so, gazing quietly before him, without returning the gaze 
he knew she had fixed on him. “ But that is long ago,” 
he added, “ and you have your life to live. Because you 
made one mistake, because one man proved unworthy, 
will you spoil another’s happiness?” 

“Unworthy!” cried Lilian, in a voice that startled 
him. “Henry Everard was never unworthy; that is no 
word to apply to him. A more spotless man never 
breathed.” 

“Oh, Lilian,” returned Ingram, “you must indeed 
have loved him if you believed him innocent after the 
evidence which condemned him.” 

“ I did indeed love him,” said Lilian, with quiet 
fervor. 

He was silent for a time, half stunned by the calm 
force of Lilian’s words; then at last he spoke. 

“ This old pain must be healed,” he said, falteringly; 

the dead past must bury its dead,” 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


233 


“ The past is alive and young,” replied Lilian. 

“Dearest Lilian, this must not be,” said Ingram, with 
resolution. “ It is wrong and morbid to go on brooding 
over an old sorrow, and refusing comfort. Innocent or 
not, he is dead to you; your love can profit him no more 
than if he were actually in the grave — ” 

“ You are mistaken,” interrupted Lilian; “ we corre- 
spond. Besides, the imprisonment is not for life.” 

“ Lilian, this is too dreadful. A convicted felon with 
a twenty years’ sentence ! Supposing even the best, and 
he came out at the end of fifteen or sixteen years; you are 
six-and-twenty now; youth would be gone — ” 

“ But not love, Ingram. Do you know what love is ? 
It is stronger than time, stronger than prisons, stronger 
than sorrow, stronger than shame; it is stronger, even, 
than death. Many waters -cannot quench it, even waters 
of salt tears; and no floods of affliction can drown it. 
Love is immortal, and knows nothing of age or death.” 

Ingram gazed awe-stricken upon the inspired face, 
etherealized by the dreamy moonlight and its own holy 
passion, and listened to the beautiful voice as people 
listen to fine strains of organ music. 

“ Lilian,” he said at last, “ this cannot be. You must 
not ‘throw away your life like this. Time will soften 
these feelings.” 

“Never,” she returned, firmly. “Ingram, you must 
waste no more time on me. You are my very dear friend, 
and I have told you the secret of my heart, and you see 
now how impossible any such relations are to me. Let 
your past bury its dead, and fix your heart’s good affec- 
tions elsewhere. Come, let us go.” 

But he would not go on; he stopped, and, taking her 
hand, poured out a torrent of remonstrance and entreaty. 

“Look, Ingram,” she said at last, “look northward. 
If our sight could reach so far, we should see a river, a 
dark river crowded with shipping, and beyond the river 
stands a black round mass of buildings. In that dark 
mass there is a cell, in which, perhaps, this very moon is 
shining now through the barred window. In that cell is 
a man, a gentleman, a man of unusual gifts and culture. 
He is young, and everything has been taken from him — 
liberty, fortune, hope, ambition, honor, friends; but not 
love," she added, her features transfigured as she spoke; 


234 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


‘‘love and innocence are still his. Ingram, I am all that 
man has on this earth, and I love him. Do you think 
any happiness life can offer would make me desert him?” 

“He would never wish you to be bound to him if he 
really cared for you.” 

“He does not wish it. But think of that solitary 
prisoner, and remember he is the only man I ever loved 
or could love. That is my last word.” 

They went silently on their way with full hearts, Lil- 
ian's tearful glances always turned northward, and those 
of her companion bent downward. 

At that moment, within the gloomy building beyond 
the dark and crowded river, a strongly built man, with a 
haggard face and dark eyes full of intellect, was lying on 
a hard couch in his solitary cell, on the bare white wall 
of which fell a square patch of bright moonlight, crossed 
by the shadow of iron bars. He was glad that the 
window looked southward, and turned to it even in his 
sleep. 

But he was awake now, and thinking how the mellow 
glory was falling on the Malbourne corn-fields and 
the beloved roof which sheltered Lilian, and wondering 
if, perhaps the same luster which gilded his dim and 
dreary cell made a halo for the adored face. 


CHAPTER III. 

Some few years since, the fiat went forth for the old 
familiar walls and heavy gates of Portsmouth town to be 
levelled to the ground, that the space which these now 
useless relics of the past occupied might be covered with 
buildings connected with the defences and adapted to the 
requirements of the present. Down went many a fine 
old elm beneath axe and rope, and bit by bit the ramparts 
disappeared, and the ditches were filled by the busy 
hands of sunburnt men, armed with barrow, pick-ax, 
and spade. 

One summer morning, while these works were in prog- 
ress, the sun shone brightly in the clear blue sky, and 
over the quiet sea and still quieter harbor; on the troop- 


TBE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


235 


ships and mail-clad men-of-war, the busy steamers and 
countless boats of every description which filled these 
peaceful waters; on the gay garrison town, and on the 
beach, crowded with bathers. Now and again a bugle 
rang out, a gun was fired, snatches of military music were 
heard; on the breezy common, the strong horses and heavy 
guns of mounted artillery were careering through thick 
dust-clouds, whence the sparkle of arms and accoutre- 
ments gleamed more effectively in the brilliant sunlight. 
Portsmouth streets were full of life, and the melodious 
chimes of the parish church floated sweetly over street, 
harbor, and bastion at every quarter. 

Not very far from the Queers Bastion a party of men 
were at work upon the partly levelled fortifications. They 
toiled on in the hot sunshine in a listless, unwilling man- 
ner, each man apparently trying to accomplish as little 
as possible. They were an ugly set, for the most part, 
with low brows, heavy jaws, and brutal looks, and their 
close-cropped hair, small black oilskin caps, dingy yellow 
clothes, and clumsy boots by no means softened their 
repulsive appearance. Many of them looked at the gay 
carriages and brightly clad women and children passing 
and repassing, while some bent their scowling brows 
stolidly over their spades. But the gazers did not look 
up with a direct glance; they looked out of the corners 
of their eyes, round their noses, with all kinds of crooked 
and tortuous glances, like the traitors Dante saw in his 
“Inferno.” Few of these men could give a level glance 
or a candid answer; still fewer could think a clear and 
honest thought. 

At intervals, watching them, and occasionally giving a 
sharp, stern order, stood armed men, stalwart and blue- 
clad, with faces like rocks. Their guns were loaded with 
ball, and their side-arms gleaming in the sun, looked ter- 
ribly practical. As the convicts pursued their forced, 
unwelcome toil, with the sweat beading their weather- 
stained brows, a slow, melancholy, long-drawn music pealed 
from the distance, and grew more and more distinct, 
while the passengers thickened; and a slowly moving mass 
of scarlet, interspersed with flashes of steel and gold came 
into sight. The wail of the trumpets rose into notes of 
shriller anguish, while the heavy roll of the muffled 
drums beneath was like the despairing voice of some 


236 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


irrevocable doom, and smote heavily upon the heart of 
one of the convicts, who recognized in the wailing music, 
the reversed arms, and slow rhythm of the soldiers’ even 
march, the solemn pageant of a military funeral. 

As the procession drew nearer, the road became more 
choked with passengers and gazers, and people climbed 
on the unfenced works, some to see the pageant better, 
others to be out of the way till the crowd was past. They 
gradually pressed closer and closer on the convicts, whose 
dangerous proximity they did not heed, until the warders, 
finding it impossible to keep them away, formed the con- 
victs in line as far away as possible, and bid them stand 
at attention while the funeral glided by in its slow maj- 
esty. 

The convict in whose breast the sorrowful music had 
found such a responsive echo was on the outside of the 
two-deep line nearest the road, and was within a few 
paces of two ladies who had drawn aside to avoid the 
crowd. At first sight there was nothing to distinguish 
No. 62 from his repulsive comrades, but a closer gaze 
revealed an intellectual face, gaunt and lined with suffer- 
ing; dark hazel eyes, with a straight, thoughtful glance; 
and a genial mouth, which had lost its old habit of smil- 
ing. He was of slighter build than most of the convicts, 
but strong and well-set. His name, which he had not 
heard for a weary time, and which his nearest and dear- 
est friends had long ceased to pronounce, was Henry 
Everard. 

Many an old memory stirred within him as he heard 
the muffled roll of the drums and looked upon the scarlet 
mass of silent men moving by; for many of the soldiers 
wore the number of his brother’s regiment on their uni- 
forms, and he thought of the sunny-hearted Leslie, whom 
he had so admired and loved, and with whom, when quite 
a lad, he had spent so many pleasant holidays, all tuned 
to the bright music of trumpet and drum, and the quick 
rattle of arms and rhythmic tread of armed men. 

He remembered, his pride the first time he was admitted 
as a grown man to the mess-table, and his brother’s gal- 
lant presence and light-hearted merriment, and the 
respect paid him bv the raw lads who had just joined. 
Of all his brothers, Leslie was nearest him in age, though 
some years his senior, and dearest to him in affection; 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


237 


but now — where was he? Lost to him with all that the 
great storm of his life had carried away— lost, but not 
forgotten. His eye sought him among the officers, one 
or two.of whom he recognized, but Leslie was not there. 
He might have exchanged; he was probably promoted. 
Who knew what might have happened in those years? 

“ Yes,” one of the ladies said, “my husband knew him 
well. They were stationed at Malta together. As you 
see, our regiment is following as well as his own. A 
popular officer, as nice men generally are. ” 

Everard had observed the second regiment, and at the 
same moment it had struck him that, although the 
charger walking with empty saddle behind the gun- 
carriage showed the rank of the deceased officer to be at 
least that of major, it was not impossible that his brother 
might be lying beneath the Union Jack. Then he 
caught sight of the occupants of the mourning-coaches. 
In one he saw the gray head of his father, and his heart 
misgave him. But he reflected that he was Admiral of 
the Port. Might he be there in his official capacity? 
But George was there also, and his heart died within him. 

“ His coming home was so sad,” continued one of the 
ladies. “ If he cou!d but have lived till he reached land! 
But he died just as they were disembarking. His wound 
was not so very serious; he got fever upon it.” 

“ And his friends were just too late to see him alive,” 
added the other lady. “ Only one child, I think? And 
the poor wife was here to receive him.” 

This, though in low tones such as ladies naturally use 
in a crowd, the convict's eager, strained ears caught, till 
at last he could bear it no longer; and, forgetful of the 
strict prison discipline, he lifted his cap, and, stepping 
quickly forward, addressed the lady nearest him. 

“ Pardon me, madam, the officer's name? ” he asked. 

“ Major Everard,” replied the lady, startled into a 
quick response, and drawing back with some alarm. 

No. 62 had neither eyes nor ears for the warder's stern 
admonition. He drew back into line, while the heart- 
shaking roll of the drums and the wail of the trumpets 
grew fainter and fainter, and the crowd moved away. 
Then he resumed his barrow at the word of command, 
and wheeled it along the plank under the hot sun: but 
heavy tears fell upon the dry rubbish of the old fortifica* 


238 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


tions, and ever and anon lie lifted his toil-stained hand 
to dash away the quick-falling drops, while his comrades* 
rude jeers and foul pleasantries, stealthily muttered as 
they were, reached his ears unheeded. 

“ Emily/* said the lady who had replied to the con- 
vict’s question, as they resumed their road when the 
crowd melted, “that man was a gentleman. Did you 
notice his voice and the way in which he lifted his cap? ** 
“Poor fellow!*’ returned the other. “Why was he so 
curious? He will be punished for speaking, you know. 
Perhaps he had friends in the regiment.** 

“Perhaps. By the way, I wonder how soon one ought 
to call on Mrs. Everard? She really never joined the 
regiment, you see; but our husbands were intimate 
friends.** 

Leslie dead! the gay and gallant Leslie, the joyous, 
light-hearted companion of his boyhood, his father*s 
favorite son! Like the slow strokes of a knell which 
beat into the agonized brain of a mourner, these mourn- 
ful words — Leslie dead — kept dinning into Everard*s ears 
all that long day. He heard them in every stroke of 
pick and hammer, while he toiled on with his barrow; 
in the boom of guns at sea; in the measured tread of the 
convicts as they marched back to dinner; in the few 
brief orders given by the warders, as the convicts stood 
with arms uplifted, while a rapid, skilled hand was 
passed over every inch of their bodies in search of any- 
thing that might have been received and secreted from 
the outer world; in the clang of the prison bell, which 
told that the hour of respite was past, and time come to 
march out to work again. 

“And he will never know that I was innocent,** 
thought Everard, as he ate his solitary meal in his cell, 
“sein Brodt mit Thranen ass.** 

Next to the discovery of Cyril’s treachery, he had been 
most cut to the heart by receiving no message or com- 
munication from Leslie after his conviction. The ad- 
miral’s stern though kindly nature he knew, and he was 
not surprised that, after the long array of damning evi- 
dence against him, the plain, upright sailor should treat 
him as one dead; nor was he surprised, though deeply 
pained, that Keppel should do likewise. 

His sisters and their husbands he knew too well to 


THE SILENCE OF LEAN MAITLAND. 


239 


think they would ever trouble themselves about a dis- 
graced kinsman; but Leslie, the generous, warm-hearted 
Leslie, whom he so loved and admired, and Marion, the 
darling of his childhood and youth — that they should 
think him guilty, that cut into the very core of his heart. 
And now Leslie — unless, indeed, the dead see the things 
of life with clearer vision than they who are still mingled 
in its turmoil — could never know that he was innocent. 
And lie had taken a wife— left forlorn now, poor soul! — 
and there was an orphan child of his own blood. And so 
the great stream of life rolled on past the desolate rock 
to which he was left chained, deaf to the thunder of 
the on-rushing waves, clean forgotten, like a dead man 
out of mind. 

Like those sufferers whom Dante met in hell, and who 
thought no more of their agonies in the bitter tidings he 
brought them of their beloved on earth, No. 62 cared 
little for the punishment and loss of good marks which 
his breach of discipline cost him. It was many days 
before he was again employed on the fortifications, for 
that work was eagerly coveted and only given to the best- 
behaved men, both because it afforded the unfortunate 
captives a welcome glimpse of the outside world, and also 
because it offered greater facilities of escape than any 
other work, greater even than those which the dock-yard 
laborers enjoyed. 

Everard's next week, therefore, was spent within the 
dreary confines of the prison, partly at accounts and partly 
at hospital duty, in which he was much more useful than 
other men on account of his previous training, but duties 
which he particularly abhorred for many reasons; among 
others, on account of the confinement and the leisure 
they gave the mind for brooding. 

It is difficult to realize the agony of despair which 
devoured Everard's heart and confused his intellect in the 
first months of his imprisonment. The horror of Cyril's 
treachery and evil-doing, and the shame of seeing all 
human virtue and honor in the dust, blunted his percep- 
tions of minor evils at first, and the black despair of feel- 
ing that there was no God, or only some cruel deity who 
laughed at the misery of innocent men and promoted evil- 
doers, made him like a stone. 

The thought that his life's purpose was wrecked; that 


240 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


he could now never pursue those grand scientific theories 
which he was so near bringing to perfection; that the pro- 
ductions of centuries of human intellect were closed to 
him forever; that the mental powers he so delighted in 
exercising must rust, and perhaps be crushed beneath a 
daily load of brute-like drudgery and degrading hardship; 
that his finer susceptibilities would be blunted or effaced 
by the daily contact with all that was coarsest and foulest 
in human nature; that he would be utterly cut off from all 
that was calculated to nourish and refresh the higher na- 
ture, did not come to him till much later. 

Like some captured wild beast, he submitted with 
dogged unwillingness to the restraints of superior force; 
he did his prison tasks with the mute protest of the 
blinded Samson among his tormentors, not caring whether 
he pulled down the pillars of his prison-house or not in 
his savage strength. It was a relief to him to exhaust 
himself in hard bodily toil, and he performed feats of 
strength in his passion which surprised men born and 
trained to physical labor. 

The chaplain was a man for whom the human soul had 
no secret sanctuary in which angels, much less foolish 
and sinful men, might fear to tread, and for whom the 
highest mysteries of the divine nature were but scraps of 
glib commonplace; a man who expected men steeped in 
years of vice and foulness to be converted at once by the 
rude and sudden enunciation of his well-worn formula; a 
sincere and well-meaning man withal, who looked upon 
earth as an ante-chamber to an unspeakable hell, from 
which a very small and numbered few might occasionally 
be snatched by a sort of chance-medley jugglery, of which 
he and half a dozen more alone knew the catch-word or 
enchanted pass-word; the chaplain pronounced him an 
utter reprobate. 

“But have you no care for your poor soul?” he asked 
one day, after wearisome exhortations and endless ques- 
tioning, to which the prisoner had given no reply. 

“None whatever,” he replied at last. 

He was no favorite with the warders, whom he despised 
in his unjust resentment of their authority, or with his 
fellow-prisoners, who hated him, first, because he was a 
gentleman; and, secondly, because all his looks and 
words silently rebuked the viciousness of their own. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


241 


Excessive labor and hopeless brooding brought him to the 
hospital at last. 

The prison doctor knew his history, and felt for him as 
for a brother in trouble, and, accustomed as he was to 
suspect and discover malingering, saw at once that No. 
62’s strange malady was no feigned one, but arose from 
the mind rather than the body. One day, after many 
rough but kindly efforts to rouse him, he said at 
last — 

“ If you go on like this, you will lose your reason before 
long/’ 

“ Reason!” retorted the patient, with bitter scorn. 
“And what use is reason to me?” 

“It is of little use to you, perhaps,” rejoined the 
officer, moving away, “ but the loss of it will make you 
a dangerous nuisance to others.” 

This drastic observation had a wholesome effect upon 
the prisoner’s stricken mind. The notion of sinking into 
a dangerous nuisance stung him into a sense of the 
unmanliness of giving himself up to his miseries; it awoke 
in him the bracing thought that some faint remnants 
of duty remained even to one so cut off from his kind as 
himself. 

He thought that he probably would become insane, his 
medical knowledge told him how much he had to fear on 
that score from his terrible life; but he was resolved that 
at least he would do his best to preserve his wits. He 
therefore took counsel with the surgeon, and during his 
hospital leisure formed a scheme of intellectual and moral 
discipline. He forced himself to an interest in the 
repulsive human creatures and the dreary occupations of 
the prison. He made a mental time-table, in which 
certain days or hours were to be given to the recollection 
of particular fields of knowledge, certain days to the 
mental speaking of Latin, Greek, etc. Such poetry as 
he knew by heart he arranged for periodic mental repeti- 
tion. He did the same with the plots of ^Eschylus and 
others which he loved, and could not obtain from the 
prison library. He told himself the story of Troy and 
the wanderings of Ulysses on many a lonely night. He 
traced the minutest recesses of his fellow-prisoners’ anat- 
omy beneath their outward semblance, mentally depriving 
them of flesh, muscle, and sinew, as easily as Carlyle’s 
16 


242 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


imagination dispossessed his fellows of their garments; 
and lost no opportunity of observing whatever crossed his 
limited field of vision. 

It was weary work, but it saved him. He fed his starv- 
ing heart with memories of hours passed with Lilian and 
others dear to him — memories as full of pain as pleasure, 
particularly those which recalled the few last vivid days 
at Malbourne before his arrest. Yet his heart was still 
bitter with black despair. 

Chapel-going was a dreary thing, and little calculated 
to edify one less full of despairing doubt than Everard. 
It was difficult to preserve a devotional spirit amid that 
crowd of foul-mouthed malefactors, who mingled ribaldry 
and blasphemy with the responses they uttered and the 
hymns they sang for the sake of using their voices. 

One day, Everard was aroused from a mental review of 
the symptoms in a complicated and interesting case he 
once conquered, during the sleepy drone of the Litany, by 
a rush through the air near him, followed by a crash. 
He looked up in time to see the bent head of the governor 
struck by the shoe of the prisoner next him, and the gov- 
ernor himself looked up in time to receive the second 
shoe full in his face. This incident, typical of many 
similar ones, seriously interfered with the morning's de- 
votion. 

One drowsy, warm autumn morning, about six months 
after his conviction, Everard was more than usually de- 
pressed, and had taken refuge in sorrowful dreams of 
happier days. The prisoners were quieter than usual, 
some dozing, some refreshed by the Te Deum they had 
been loudly singing, some really touched by the awful 
pathos of the gospel which was being read, when suddenly 
a phrase seemed to detach itself from the rest of the nar- 
rative, and, as if uttered by a trumpet voice, to trace 
itself deeply upon Everard's mind, waking him from his 
melancholy dream, and startling him into a newer life. 
The phrase consisted of those heart-shaking words, “My 
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’' 

Every detail of the agony and crucifixion flashed clear 
upon his mind, strangely mingled with the feeling of 
calm strength with which the picture of Gethsemane in 
the study at Malbourne had inspired him in the hour of 
his extremity. Tears rushed to his eyes, and he trem- 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


243 


bled. All those weary months his heart had been echoing 
that most bitter cry, without remembering that Christ 
had been forced to utter it in the hour in which He 
accomplished mam’s redemption. 

The darkness which had come upon him in the pris- 
oner’s dock at the discovery of his friend’s baseness rolled 
away, and he recognized his own wrong-doing. What 
was Cyril, after all, that his faith in divine and human 
goodness should depend on him? Had he not idolized 
the poor, weak, erring lad, whom his strength should 
rather have pitied? And what was he that he should 
escape that darkness which brooded over the very cross? 
How many men down the long roll of the ages had suf- 
fered bonds and treachery, being innocent? Cyril’s cyn- 
ical “ She is not the first,” flashed upon him, and he won- 
dered that he should have cried out so loud when he 
found himself enrolled in the vast army of the world’s 
sufferers. What claim had he for exemption from earth’s 
anguish? 

“There is a Cod, and there is good, and the bitterest 
lot has comfort,” he said within himself, reversing his 
despairing utterance in the dock when the conviction of 
Cyril’s treachery flashed upon him, as he marched with 
his fellow-sufferers into the yard, where an hour of sun- 
light and freedom within four walls was permitted them 
on Sundays. 

The mid-day sky was transparently blue and suffused 
with light, so that it was a joy to look upon; the sunny 
autumn air was sweet to breathe; and the sheets of sun- 
shine fell pleasantly upon him, in spite of the garb of 
shame and bondage they lighted, and the prison walls 
whose shadows limited them, and for the first moment 
since his imprisonment Everard felt that enjoyment was 
possible, even to one so stricken as himself, since Heaven 
smiled still upon him, captive though he was. 

Just then an oblong packet was put in his hand. He 
looked at it with mute amazement for a moment, for he 
had forgotten how it feels to receive a letter; and then 
he uttered a faint cry, for the handwriting was Lilian’s. 
His first instinct was to conceal it from the vulgar crew 
around him, and he scarcely noticed that the sacred 
cover, closed by the beloved hand, had been violated by 
some stranger’s touch, according to the stern prison rule. 


244 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND . 


He walked up and down the yard as one whose steps 
are on air, his eyes full of soft fire, happy merely to hold 
the treasure in his hand. He did not open it till he was 
alone in his cell, that narrow witness of so much agony, 
which now became a palace of delight. 

It was a letter such as only the tenderness of a good 
and loving woman for one in deep affliction could inspire. 
It had touched even the official reader, accustomed to 
moving letters full of ill-spelled pathos from broken- 
hearted and often injured women to the villains they 
loved, and it went into the very marrow of Everard’s 
being, and steeped him in an atmosphere of pure thought 
and high-souled feeling, to which he had long been a 
stranger, and which refreshed his parched spirit like 
waters in a desert of burning sand. 

Lilian briefly mentioned Cyril’s terrible illness and her 
own, and described his state, which was still one of 
doubtful sanity, requiring the most watchful care; there 
were few tidings besides. Then she spoke of Henry’s 
affliction, and bid him keep up his heart, and pray con- 
stantly, as she did, that his innocence might be made 
clear. That the truth must come out sooner or later, she 
was convinced, referring him to the great promises made 
to the just man in the Scriptures. In the mean time, 
who could tell but that some wise and beneficent end 
was to be fulfilled by his sojourn in prison. The pur- 
poses of the Almighty were deep and unsearchable, far 
hidden from the thoughts of men; but whatever treachery 
and wickedness had brought Everard to that pass of 
shame and misery, she bid him remember that without 
the divine permission he could not be there. 

What if some nobler and higher use than he could ever 
have wrought outside in the free world were to be his in 
that dreary place? Who could say what the influence of 
one solitary man of stainless life might be in that crowd 
of degraded yet still human creatures, or what sorrow 
might be there to comfort? Let him only remember that 
the Almighty had placed him in that dreary dungeon as 
surely as He had placed the sovereign on the throne, the 
priest at the altar, and the bright blossom in the sun- 
shine, and take comfort. 

The opportune words soothed and strengthened Ever- 
ard’s soul, the more so as Lilian did not underrate the 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


245 


magnitude of the sacrifice he had been called upon to 
make, but spoke feelingly of the cruel denials and degra- 
dations of his lot, and of the frustration of their common 
hopes, and of the separation, which she trusted might 
soon be at an end. 

She bid him remember also, that, as a true lover, he must 
keep up his courage for her sake, and hope in the future, 
which they might still enjoy together. Nor was this 
noble letter wanting in those assurances of love which are 
so cordial to parted lovers. Its effect upon the lonely 
prisoner is difficult to imagine, much less describe. 

But it was greatly due to the hope and faith which it 
inspired, that from that day the prison became to Everard 
no longer a place of darkness and despair, but a part of 
God's own world, over which divine wisdom and mercy still 
smiled, and in which a man's soul might still find its 
necessary celestial food. 


CHAPTER IV. 

Everard found, to his unspeakable consolation, that 
he might answer Lilian's letter, though his answer would 
have to pass before the cold eyes of the officials; and, 
further, that once in every few months Lilian intended to 
write to him. 

Thus from time to time his soul was braced and re- 
freshed by the dear delight of communicating with the be- 
ing he loved most in the world. How he counted the 
weeks and days till the day of days arrived; how he treas- 
ured phrases and sentences of those precious letters (which 
he was, of course, not allowed to preserve) in his memory; 
and how much thought he gave beforehand to the com- 
position of replies! 

Many dark and terrible hours of bitter inward wrestling 
he still had after that blessed autumn Sunday, but the 
general tenor of his inward life was brave and hopeful. 
He found much to interest him in his fellow-prisoners, 
and here and there flowers of tenderness and charitj 
sprung up along the barren prison path, and he evej 
formed friendships — yes, warm and lasting friendships-^ 


246 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND . 


with some of the felons among whom his lot was cast, 
and enjoyed the pure happiness of knowing that he had, 
as Lilian predicted, rescued more than one fallen creature 
from despair, and set his face heavenward. 

Among his first friends was a young fellow whose char- 
acter reminded him strongly of CyriFs, lovable, pious, 
well-disposed, refined, but weak and selfish. He was of 
gentle birth, and had held a position of trust under a 
large banking firm. He married young on a small income; 
marriage brought cares, and did not diminish the love of 
pleasure. He got into debt, gambled to extricate him- 
self, and, of course, plunged further in. Ruin stared 
him in the face, and he embezzled the sums trusted him, 
meaning, as such criminals usually do, to pay all back in 
time. He left a young wife and child destitute in the 
hard world while undergoing his seven years* imprison- 
ment. He was heartbroken, and Everard saw him glide 
swiftly into the clutches of consumption and fade before 
him. 

Many a stroke of work he did for the poor weakling, 
and many a thought of hope and manly cheerfulness he 
gave him. And by the darkness in the prison the day 
the poor fellow was taken to the infirmary — never more, 
as Everard well knew, to come out again — he knew how 
much brightness his friendship had made in that dreary 
spot. Everard, as a special grace, besought them to give 
him hospital duty, that he might himself tend his dying 
friend, and thus he was able to soothe his latest moments; 
receive his piteous message for his wife, whom Everard 
had little hope of ever meeting; and close his eyes when 
he had no more need of the sun. 

As the outer world, so was the narrow prison sphere, 
Everard found after awhile; men trusted and betrayed, 
loved and hated, schemed and envied, derided misfortune 
or helped it, as in the world, only there was a larger 
percentage of rascals inside the prison than outside. His 
friends were chiefly gentlemen, though he sought the 
friendship of the lowest ; a man had but to be miserable 
to found a claim upon his heart. 

But never till he dwelt on equal terms with the scum 
of all classes did he discover how hard and inflexible are 
the iron bars which divide class from class. The gentle- 
men, from the fraudulent director and forging ex-Guards- 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 247 

man down to the smallest clerk or shopman who could 
handle a pen, hailed him as a brother, while those who 
belonged to what one may call the washing classes, were 
as his twin brothers; but the hand-laborers, the non- 
readers and non- washers, and the criminal class proper, 
looked upon him as their natural enemy, and, beyond 
mere brutal elementary necessities, discovered little on 
which they could exchange sympathy and build friendship. 

Everard sometimes longed for half a dozen villainous 
noblemen, a misdoing minister or two, and one or two 
iniquitous emperors, to make the social world complete. 
In that case, in spite of the prison equality, there would 
be no fear, he well knew, that the little society would 
resolve itself into a republic; the rascal emperor would 
have his rascal court, and the minor rascals would fall 
naturally into their places. 

In the process of the long years a sort of sleep had 
settled upon Everard’s nature. He grew so inured to the 
prison routine, with its numbing drudgery, that he had 
ceased to think of freedom or to feel active pain in his 
never-ceasing torment. But Leslie’s funeral was like the 
stab of a sharp knife in a numbed limb; it woke him to 
full consciousness of his misery and degradation. He 
had been at Portsmouth only for some six months, 
having been suddenly transported thither, he knew not 
why, and he had but recently discovered that his father 
was port-admiral. 

Daily, as he worked on the dock-yard extension, he 
had passed the admiral’s great house, with the green in 
front, and the semaphore, waving long arms to all the 
subject ships in harbor, upon its roof, and had looked at 
it with a listless, incurious eye, little dreaming who was 
the chief figure in the court which gathers round 
the port-admiral as a tiny social king, till one sunny 
noon, when going home to dinner with his gang, he saw 
the admiral descending the steps to welcome some guests, 
and felt the sting of his humiliation as he had never done 
before, not even when one day, in the midst of his muddy 
work at the extension, he had seen Keppel in full uni- 
form rowed ashore from his ship with all the pomp and 
circumstance of a naval captain on blue waters. Some 
weeks before the funeral, when he was going on to the 
dock-yard works at early morning, the port-admiral’s 


248 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


house was still lighted up, its windows shone sickly in 
the gray daylight, a few carriages were still drawn up in 
a lessening line before the principal door, and the last 
strains of a military band were dying away. 

The admiral, assisted by his daughter-in-law, the Hon. 
Mrs. Keppel Everard, had given a great ball that night, 
and in one of the carriages, into which the admiral was 
leaning, talking, No. 62 saw a black-coated man, whose 
features, dim in the shadow, suggested Cyril 's, and by 
his side, pale from the long night's waking, and talking 
to the old man, was surely, surely, his own sister Marion. 

Did they know he was there? or had Lilian purposely 
withheld the information to spare them pain? He could 
not tell. But these circumstances, together with the 
funeral, conspired to make his life intolerable, and when 
once more he found himself laboring on the old fortifica- 
tions, he stepped along in the gang with a subdued leap 
in his gait, like a caged beast. 

Long since he had renounced the hope of being freed 
by Cyril's conscience. He had never made any attempt 
to fasten the guilt on the real criminal; he shrank from 
the complex misery it would bring upon all dear to him; 
md, moreover, his evidence, though absolutely convinc- 
ing to himself, was purely conjectural. He could bring 
not one proof, no single witness, save the dumb cat, and 
that evidence, he well knew, would suffice only to con- 
vince the one person he most wished to be ignorant of the 
truth, Lilian herself. 

The day on which he returned to the fortifications was 
hot and fiercely bright. The town was full of life. Gay 
carriages were bearing ladies in light summer bravery 
to garden-parties, afternoon dances on board ships, and 
other revels; bands were playing on piers; vessels of every 
kind, some gay with flags, dotted the Solent and the calm 
blue harbor; colors had been trooped on the common, 
troops had marched past the convicts; the sweet chimes 
of St. Thomas's had rung a wedding peal; the great guns 
had thundered out royal salutes to the royal yacht as she 
bore the sovereign over to the green Wight — there was 
such a rush and stir of life as quite bewildered Everard, 
and made the sharpest contrast to his gray and dreary 
prison life. To see these freest of free creatures, the 
street boys, sauntering or springing at will along the hot 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


249 


streets, or, casting off their dirty rags, flinging them- 
selves into the fresh salt sea and revelling there like young 
Tritons, or balanced on rails, criticising the passing 
troops, was maddening. 

The day grew hotter, but pick and barrow had to be 
plied without respite, though the sweat poured from hot 
brows, and one man dropped. Everard saw that it was 
sunstroke, and not malingering, as the warder was 
inclined to think, and by his earnest representations got 
the poor creature proper treatment. The brassy sky grew 
lurid purple, and heavy growls of thunder came rumbling 
from the distance; some large drops of rain fell scantily; 
and then suddenly the sky opened from horizon to horizon 
and let down a sheet of vivid flame. Darkness followed, 
and a roar as of all the artillery at Portsmouth firing and 
all its magazines exploding at once. 

“Now or never, ” thought Everard, and, dropping his 
barrow at the end of his plank, he leaped straight ahead 
down into a waste patch, over which he sprang to the 
road. He ran for life and liberty with a speed he did not 
know himself capable of, straight on, blindly aiming at 
the shore, tearing off his cap and jacket and flinging 
them widely in different directions, as he went through 
the dark curtain of straight, rushing rain. 

The warders, bewildered by the awful roar of the thun- 
der, blinded by the fierce, quick dazzle of the lightning 
and the blackness of the all-concealing rain, did not at 
first miss him. It was only when he leaped the palisade 
bounding the road, and showed through the rain-curtain 
a bare-headed, fugitive figure, that the grim guardian 
caught sight of him. Had he possessed the nerve to 
walk quietly out through the gate, he might have got off 
unobserved under cover of the storm. 

Quick as thought, the warder on seeing him, lifted his 
piece to his shoulder and fired. He was a good marks- 
man, and his face lighted up with satisfaction as he hit 
his flying quarry, in spite of the bad light and confusing 
storm. 

Everard felt a sharp, hot sting in the thigh, but ran 
on, his course marked with blood, which the friendly 
storm quickly washed away. The darkness became 
intenser, the lightning more blinding, the downrush 
of rain heavier, and the crashing of the thunder more 


250 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


deafening. Nevertheless, the alarm was given, and the 
pursuers were soon in full chase. 

Down the now deserted high-road dashed the fugitive, 
every faculty he possessed concentrated on flight. With 
the blind instinct of the hunted, he rushed at the first 
turning, through a gate, up some steps, along to the 
bastion which rose behind the powder magazines. He 
darted along some pleasant green walk under the massy 
elms, till he reached the first sentry-box, in which stood 
the sentry, a stalwart Highlander, sheltering from the 
storm. 

Instead of firing on him, as the desperate fugitive 
expected, the man stepped swiftly aside, and the panting 
runner, divining his friendly purpose, ran into the box. 

The soldier swiftly resumed his station, and stood look- 
ing out with an immovable face as before, while the 
hunted convict, in the darkness in the narrow space at 
his side, stood face inward, close pressed to the wooden 
wall, soaked to the skin, and panting in hard gasps that 
were almost groans, yet sufficiently master of himself to 
press a wad of folded trouser on the bleeding wound, 
which proved to be only a flesh graze, but which might 
ruin the friendly Scot by its damning stains on the floor 
of the box. 

“ Quiet's the word,” said the hospitable sentry, and 
nothing more. 

Some minutes passed. Everard's breathing became 
less labored, and his reflections more agonized; the 
thunder-peals grew less tremendous, while the rain be- 
came heavier. The pursuers had lost sight of their prey 
in the road before he reached the gate, and had been 
thrown off the scent, while still sending searchers in all 
directions. Two of these turned up through the gate, 
and one explored all the nooks and crannies of the 
crescent-shaped space walled by the bastion which shel- 
tered the powder-magazines, while the other examined 
the path itself, and interrogated the sentry. 

“Past the Garrison Chapel, toward High Street; out of 
my range,” he said, coolly; and the pursuer, calling his 
comrade, flew with him along the bastion, not stopping 
to inquire of the other sentries. “ Gone away,” observed 
the Highlander to his quivering guest, who had feared 
lest his light-colored dress might betray him behind the 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


251 


sentry, whose plaid and kilt and feather bonnet filled up 
all of the opening not darkened by his tall figure. “ Off 
the scent. What next, mate?” 

“Heaven knows! I only hope I may not ruin you. If 
I get off I will not forget you. My friends are well off, 
and I am — ■” 

“ Henry Everard. Seen you often with your gang — 
recognized at once.” 

“ Good heavens ! ” cried Everard, not seeing his host’s 
handsome face but feeling a vague stir of memory at his 
voice; “ who are you ? ” 

“Private Walker, 179th Highlanders. Was Balfour of 
Christ-church.” 

“Balfour? What! come to this? What did we not 
expect of you? ” 

“Wear a better coat than yours. Manby rough on 
you — hard lines. Do anything for you.” 

“ You always were a good-hearted fellow. And I was 
innocent, Balfour; I had not the faintest grudge against 
the poor fellow. But how did you come to this? You 
took honors.” 

“ Governor poor — large family — small allowance at 
Cambridge — debts — Jews. Called to Bar — small allowance 
again — no briefs — more debts — more Jews. Governor 
suggests Australia — all up here — didn’t see boiling tallow 
in Australia — if a day-laborer, why not in England? 
Always liked the service — enlisted — Hussar regiment — 
jolly life — saw service — full sergeant — time expired. 
Sent into Reserve — not allowed to re-enlist — name of 
Smith. Tried civil life — down on my luck again — 
deserted from Reserve — re-enlisted in Highlanders — name 
of Walker — enlistment fraudulent — liable to imprison- 
ment — foreign service soon — all right. Now for you?” 

Everard had to confess that he did not in the least 
know what to do next, unless he could hide till the dark- 
ness rendered his dress unobservable. The moment he 
was seen he would be recognized anywhere as a convict. 
Various schemes were revolved between them as rapidly 
as possible, for it was essential that Everard should leave 
the sentry-box for a better hiding-place before the rapid 
diminishing of the storm should once more open the 
bastion to observers. 

The massive foliage of the elms hard by might have 


252 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MA1TLANB. 


hidden a regiment, and Balfour had observed that the 
branches attracted no suspicion on the part of the pur- 
suers, and, as the forking of the boughs did not begin till 
many feet off the ground, and the broad, smooth trunk 
offered not the smallest foothold, it was impossible for a 
man to climb into them unassisted. 

But the sentry remembered that a stout rope had been 
flung aside there by some gunners busy cleaning the 
cannon on the bastion that day. If Everard could find 
this, and fling it over a bough, he might hoist himself up. 
If he could not find it the soldier offered to come and 
lend him his shoulder — an action that might attract 
observation even in the darkness of the storm, since that 
part of the bastion was commanded by many windows, 
and that would, if discovered, bring certain ruin upon 
both men. 

Everard darted swiftly from the box, and groped about 
in the wet grass till he found the rope. This, in the still 
blinding rain, he threw over the lowest stout branch, 
keeping one end, and fearful lest the other would not 
descend within reach. After a couple of casts, however, 
he succeeded in bringing the second end, in which he had 
fastened a stone, within easy reach, and grasping both, 
and planting his feet against the broad bole, slippery with 
wet, managed to struggle up with moderate speed. He 
was half-way up, and pausing a moment to steady himself 
and look round, saw to his infinite horror that he was 
exactly opposite to, and in full view and firing range of, 
the sentry on the opposite end of the bastion, which was 
roughly crescent-shaped. 

Outlined as he was, and almost stationary against the 
tree-trunk, he presented the easiest target for a moderate 
range shot. The man was in no hurry for his easy prey, 
he lifted his musket slowly, while Everard paused, trans- 
fixed with horror. The sentry seemed as if waiting for 
him to rise into a still better position for a shot. Everard 
slipped down, expecting to hear a ball sing over his head, 
if not into his body; but there was no report, and he stood 
irresolute a moment, seeking where to fly. 

A signal of warning and haste from Balfour made him 
once more grasp his. rope in desperation, and climb 
through the peril of the sentry's aim. A flash of light- 
ning showed him his foe standing as before, with his 


TEE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


253 


musket planted firmly in front of him; he was supporting 
himself placidly with both hands clasped upon it, and his 
head bent slightly down, almost as if he had fallen asleep 
at his post. 

But Everard knew that the most careless sentries do 
not fall asleep in the process of aiming at fugitive pris- 
oners, and pressed on till he reached the first fork, where 
he rested, wondering why no shot had been fired. The 
fact was, the rain was beating straight into the man’s 
face, and he had much ado to see a yard before him, and 
had raised his musket merely to see if the breech was 
properly shielded from the wet. Everard, however, hoist- 
ing up his rope, climbed higher into his green fortress, 
expecting nothing less than to have it soon riddled in all 
directions by a fusillade from below. To his surprise he 
heard Balfour’s signal of safety, and gladly responded to 
it; for they had framed a little code of "signals before 
parting. 

It was comparative luxury to the weary, wounded man 
to sit astride a branch, with his back against the trunk, 
and the foot of the wounded limb supported upon a lower 
bough, and he gave a sigh of deep relief, and reflected 
that he was at last, after all those dreary years of bond- 
age, free. Balfour could do nothing till he was off guard, 
which would happen in another half hour. Nothing 
could be done during the next sentry’s guard, because it 
would be impossible to get at him and see how far he 
could be trusted; but if any subsequent sentry proved 
manageable, and if Balfour could get a pass for the night, 
he might bring him some sort of clothing, and then, 
under favorable circumstances, he might get off. And 
then? 

The storm abated, the last low mutter ings of thunder 
died away in the distance, the rain ceased, and the even- 
ing sun shone out with golden clearness. Some of the 
long slanting beams pierced the green roof of his airy 
prison, and fell hopefully upon the fugitive’s face. He 
heard the sentry’s measured tread below, and then the 
change of guard; the hum of the town, and the noises 
from the vessels at anchor, came, mingled with distant 
bugle-calls, to his lonely tower. The light faded, the 
sun went down in glory, the gun on the bastion fired the 
sunset, the parish church chimed half -past eight, the 


254 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


sounds from sea and shore came more distinct on the 
quieting night air, and he heard the band of a Highland 
regiment begin its skirl of pipes on the Clarence pier. 
It was probably Balfour’s regiment. 

Poor Balfour! He fell to thinking of his unfortunate 
lot, much as he had to occupy his thoughts with regard 
to his own immediate destiny. Only that week, Bal- 
four’s father, General Sir Ronald Balfour, K. C. B., as 
general commanding at Portsmouth, had reviewed the 
troops, Balfour himself being more than once face to face 
with his father. This he told Everard, adding that on a 
recent foreign royal visit to Portsmouth, the 179th had 
formed a guard of honor to the royal guests, and that 
Admiral Everard had walked down the lane of which he 
made a part, in the wake of the royal party, chancing to 
come to a full stop just on his level. 

Balfour, the star of the Debating Society, the man 
whom they had hoped to see on the Woolsack; what 
a fall was here! “ Unlucky beggar!” was the philo- 
sophic Highlander’s sole comment on his ill-starred des- 
tiny. A good fellow, and a man without a vice. 

The air was chill after sunset. Everard, motionless on 
his airy perch, bareheaded, and in his shirt-sleeves, was 
wet to the skin, and shivered with a double chill after 
the heat of his hard labor in the sultry afternoon. His 
wound ached till he began to fear it might lame him, and 
his hunger waxed keener as the night deepened and the 
cold increased. The stars came out and looked at him 
with their friendly, quieting gaze. He could see the 
sparkle of lights in the water and in the town; he could 
make out the lights of the admiral’s signal-station on his 
housetop above the dock-yard. 

Which man-of-war was Keppel’s? he wondered, know- 
ing nothing even of the outside world that was so near 
him. The chimes of the parish church told him the 
hours, and he knew when the guard would be relieved. 

It was a weary night; its minutes lagged by leaden- 
paced. He thought their long procession would never 
end; and yet there was a strange, delicious enchantment 
in the feeling that he had at last broken the bars of that 
iron prison, with its terrible bondage of unbending rou- 
tine and drudgery. The thick foliage of the elm still 
held the wet, which every passing breath of the night 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


255 


wind shook on to the grass below in a miniature shower. 
The moon rose and wandered in pale majesty across the 
sweet blue sky — such a free, broad night sky as had not 
blessed his eyes for years and years; its beams hung his 
green fortress roof with pearls and trembling diamonds, 
falling ever and anon to the earth. Sentinel after sen- 
tinel came on guard below, but there was no friendly 
signal from beneath. He had descended to the lowest 
bough to catch the slightest sound. The watch was pass- 
ing; the early dawn would shine on the next watch, and, 
if help did not come before the sunrise, he would have to 
wait till the following night, wet, starved, suffering as he 
was. But no; there is the welcome signal at last. 

Quickly he gave the answering signal; and, bending 
down in the darkness, heard the following sentence above 
the sound of the sentinel's backward and forward steps: 
“ Sentry blind and deaf — sneak off to right. Catch." 

Something flew up to him in the dark, and, after two 
misses, he caught it; and then, rising to where a rift in 
the foliage let in a shaft of rays from the waning moon, 
unfastened his* bundle, which was roughly tied with 
string. 

A battered hat, very large, so that it would hide the 
close-cropped head; a "boatman's thick blue jersey; and a 
pair of wide trousers, worn and stained, with a belt to 
fasten them ; also some second-hand boots — such was the 
simple but sufficient wardrobe which Balfour had pur- 
chased with his slender means, and brought him at deadly 
risk. 

Everard was able to discard every rag of the tell-tale 
prison garb, stamped all over as it was with the broad 
arrow, and, securing the dangerous garments to a branch 
of the tree, invested himself in the contents of the bundle 
— an occupation that took so long, owing to the inconven- 
ience of his lofty dressing-room, that the eastern sky was 
brightening and the friendly sentinel’s watch almost ex- 
pired by the time he was ready to descend from his perch, 
which he did noiselessly and apparently unobserved by 
the sentry. 

Then, slowly and painfully— -for his limbs were cramped 
and chilled, and his wound ached— he glided behind the 
dark boles till he reached the steps, and, descending them, 
found to his dismay that the gate was locked. 


256 


THE SILENCE OF LEAN MATT LANE. 


CHAPTER V. 

There is almost always some small but vitally impor- 
tant hitch in the best-laid human plans, and the hitch 
in Balfour’s arrangement was that he forgot the nightly 
locking of the gate leading on to the bastion. He had 
approached the tree from the other side, passing the sen- 
tries, being challenged by them, aud giving the word in 
reply. 

Everard knew the bastion, and had had many a pleas- 
ant stroll there in old days, when stopping with his 
father when in port, and he knew well that his only 
course was now to climb the gate, which he could not do 
without noise, and which was in no case an easy feat, the 
plain boards of which the gate was made being high, and 
the top thicky studded with those dreadful crooked nails, 
which look like alphabets gone wrong, and do dreadful 
damage both to hands and clothing. 

Fortunately, the moon had set, the Sun was not yet 
risen, and the darkness favored him — a darkness which 
every moment threatened to dissipate. He struggled up 
with as little sound as possible, with set teeth and a 
beating heart, lacerating his hands cruelly. Then, 
having gained the top — not without some rents in 
his scanty clothing — he grasped the nail studded ridge 
and sprang down. Alas! not to the ground, for one of 
the crooked nails caught in the back part of the wide 
trousers, and, with a rending of cloth and a knocking of 
his feet against the boards, he found himself arrested 
midway, and suspended by the waist against the gate, like 
a mole on a keeper’s paling. 

Had he been caught in front, he might have raised 
himself and somehow torn himself free; but being hooked 
thus in the rear, he was almost helpless, and his slightest 
effort to free himself brought the heels of his boots 
knocking loudly against the gate as if to obtain admit- 
tance, which was the last thing he wanted. Meantime, 
the minutes flew on, the darkness was breaking fast; 
before long the sun would rise, and disclose him hung 
thus helplessly on his nail to the earliest passer-by, who 
would probably be a policeman. 


THE SILENCE OF LEAN MAITLAND. 


251 


A beautiful faint flush of rose-red suddenly shot up 
over the eastern sky, and the brown shadows lessened 
around him. He heard footsteps echoing through the 
dewy stillness, and struggled with blind desperation. 
The rose-red turned deep glowing orange, objects became 
more and more distinct before him, the street lamps sick- 
ened, a soft orange ray shot straight from the sea across 
the common, through the leaves of the tree shadowing 
the gate, on to the fugitive's cheek. At the same instant 
he heard the boom of the sunrise gun; it was day. 

The footsteps approached nearer and nearer; on the 
bastion he heard the change of watch. He felt that all 
was lost, and yet, in his mental tension, his chief con- 
sciousness was of the awful beauty of the dawn, the dewy 
quiet and freshness brooding over the great town, and — 
strange contrast! — the grotesque absurdity of his situa- 
tion. He heard the lively twitter of the birds waking in 
the trees, and admired the soft radiance of the ruddy 
beams on the sleeping town; and then something gave 
way, and he found himself full length on the pavement. 

The echoing footsteps had as yet brought no figure 
round the corner, and Everard welcomed the hard salute 
of the paving-stones as the first greeting of freedom, and, 
quickly picking himself up, he fell into the slow, slouch- 
ing walk he had observed in tramps, and moved on, 
adjusting his disordered garments as best he might. 
The footsteps proved indeed to be those of a policeman, 
whose eyes were dazzled with the level sunbeams which 
he faced, and who gave him a dissatisfied but not suspi- 
cious glance and passed on. 

Everard drew a deep breath, and limped on, trying to 
disguise the lameness of the wounded limb, which he 
feared might betray him, and thrust his tom hands into 
the pockets of the trousers which had so nearly ruined 
him. His surprise and joy were great on touching with 
his left hand a substance which proved to be bread and 
cheese, which he instantly devoured, and with his right a 
few pence, and, what moved him to tears of gratitude for 
Balfour's thoughtful kindness, a short brier-wood pipe, 
well-seasoned, and doubtless the good fellow's own, a 
screw of cheap tobacco and some matches. He had not 
touched tobacco for nine years. 

A drinking-fountain supplied him with the draught of 
17 


258 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


water which his fevered throat and parched lips craved; 
it also enabled him to wash off some of the blood and dirt 
from his torn hands. And then, dragging his stiff and 
wounded limb slowly along, and eating his stale bread 
and cheese in the sweet sunshine, he made his morning 
orisons in the dewy quiet of the yet unawakened town, 
and felt a glow of intense gratitude, which increased as 
the food and water strengthened him, and exercise 
warmed his chill and stiffened frame. 

He was glad to see the houses open one by one, and the 
streets begin to fill; he thought he should attract less 
attention among numbers. He passed groups of free 
laborers hurrying to the dock-yard to work, and it gave 
him an eerie shudder to think that some of them, whose 
faces he knew, might recognize him. His terror 
increased when he saw a light on a workman’s face — a 
face he knew well, for the man had slipped over the side 
of the dock one morning, and was in imminent danger of 
being jammed by some floating timber, when Everard had 
promptly sprung after him, regardless of prison disci- 
pline, and held him up, for he could not swim, till a rope 
was brought, and the two men were hauled out, bruised 
but otherwise uninjured. 

The man stopped ; Everard went straight on, not 
appearing to see him, and, after a few seconds, to his 
dismay, heard footsteps running after him. He dared 
not quicken his pace, lest he should attract attention, but 
the food he was eating stuck in his throat, and his face 
paled. His pursuer gained his side, and, seizing his 
hand, pressed some pence into it, saying, in a low tone, 
“ Mum’s the word, mate! All the ready Eve got. 
Simon Jones, 80, King Street, for help. Better not 
stop.” 

Then he turned and resumed his road, telling his com- 
panions something about a chum of his down on his 
luck, and Everard slouched on with a lightened heart, 
and increased gratitude for the pence. He had now 
nearly two shillings in his pockets, and when he had 
lighted Balfour’s brier- wood he felt like a king. The 
last time he handled a coin was when he gave 
pence to a blind man, sitting by the police-station at 
Oldport, just before his arrest. He bought needle and 
thread to repair the tremendous fissure in the unlucky 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


259 


garments which had played him so ill a trick, and in two 
hours* time found himself well clear of the town and 
suburbs. Presently he found a shed used for sheltering 
cattle, but now empty. This he entered, and, having 
with some difficulty drawn the chief rents in his clothes 
together, washed his wound in a trough placed for some 
cattle to drink from, and bandaged that and the worst 
hurts in his hand with the handkerchief in which the 
bread and cheese was wrapped, lay down on some 
litter behind a turnip-cutting machine, and in a 
moment was fast asleep, utterly oblivious of prisons, 
wounds, and hunger. 

When he awoke, with the vague consciousness of 
change which heralds the first waking after a decisive 
event in life, he felt a strangely unprotected sensation on 
looking up at the blue sky, which showed through the 
gaps in the slightly thatched roof, and seeing a green past- 
ure, with cattle grazing upon it, spread broad and sunny 
before him on the unwailed side of the shed, instead of 
the close white walls of his cell. His sleep had been so 
profound and refreshing that it took him some seconds to 
recall the events which preceded it. Hunger and the sun 
told him it was late afternoon; prudence bid him rest the 
wounded leg, but hunger counselled him to go out and 
buy food first. 

A short walk along the dusty high-road brought him 
to a little general shop at the entrance to a village, where 
he bought a penny loaf and a little cheese, and was con- 
founded by the affability of the mistress of the shop, a 
tidy young woman with a child in her arms. 

“ Warm walking/* she observed, as she weighed his 
cheese. 

“ It is warm,** he faltered, with a strange embarrass- 
ment; for he had been addressed by no woman since the 
bitter hour of his parting from Lilian, nine years ago, 
and had a confused idea that he must be very respectful 
to every one in virtue of his low position. 

“ Tramped far?** she added, wrapping the morsel of 
cheese in paper. 

“Ho, ma*am; only from Portsmouth,** he replied; and, 
taking his purchase with a “ Thank you ’* and a touch of 
his hat, he was limping out, when the woman called him 
back. “ Seems to me you’ve been ill, and you*ve seen 


260 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND . 


better days by the sound of your tongue," she said. 
“ What have you eat to-day? " 

“ A good breakfast of bread and cheese." 

“And you just out of hospital, as I can see! Poor 
chap! and your hand bad, too. Come into my room here, 
do. Here’s some bacon and eggs my master left from 
dinner; Pll warm it up in a minute. We sha’n’t miss it, 
and it will do you a sight more good than that poor bit 
you bought. Come on in, do, the children and me is just 
getting our teas." 

Everard’s instinctive courtesy bade him accept this 
kind offer, aud he got a cup of hot tea and a good meal 
of warm food, and, what was better than all, the refresh- 
ing sense of human kindness, and departed with gratitude, 
having won golden opinions from his hostess by his 
quiet civility and wise observations upon the teething of 
her infant. 

He was grateful also for the hint about the hospital 
and the refinement of his speech, and resolved to adopt 
the broad Hampshire drawl, familiar to him from baby- 
hood. 

He trudged on with a better heart, bent chiefly on 
finding a refuge for the night,. As he approached a 
pretty cottage, with a lawn before it and a garden behind, 
a pony-carriage passed him and drew up before the gate. 
It was driven by a lady in mourning, who looked inquir- 
ingly round before alighting. Everard ran up, touching 
his hat, and held the pony’s head, while she got out, 
entered the wicket gate, rang the bell, and was admitted 
by a smart maid. 

Here was luck at the very beginning. The lady, whose 
face he had not observed in the hurry, but whose dress 
and appearance as she walked up to the door he had 
ample leisure to study, was good for at least a shilling, 
and would ask him no questions; he might soon hope to 
buy a shirt. He patted the pony’s sleek neck and 
knocked off a fly or two, and wished he knew of a high- 
road studded with ponies waiting to be held. 

Then he looked at the two pretty children the lady had 
left in her carriage, and their sweet faces filled him with 
a sense of old familiar home-happiness, and his memory 
called up a pleasant summer scene on the lawn at Mel- 
bourne — of the twins, with little Marion between them, 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


261 


pretending to chase the big boy, Harry, who fled back- 
ward as they advanced. He remembered the twins’ black 
dresses, which they wore for one of the brothers they lost 
in infancy, and the scent of the lime-blossom overhead. 

The children in the pony-carriage were prattling mer- 
rily together, and making comments on all they saw, 
himself not excepted. He had incautiously taken off his 
hot felt hat for a moment to cool himself as he stood by 
the pony, and this action greatly interested the younger 
child, a blue-eyed boy. 

“Why is all ’oo hair cut off?” he asked, earnestly 
regarding him. “ Has ’oo been to pizzen? ” 

“ I have been ill, sir, and my head was shaved,” replied 
Everard, coloring with dismay, and quickly jamming his 
hat well on, while the little maiden rebuked her brother 
for his rudeness. 

“ He did not mean to be rude,” she explained; but we 
are staying with our grandpapa in the dock-yard, and 
Ernest sees the convicts go by every day, so we play at 
convicts, and he cut his little brother’s hair off to make 
it seem more real. Wasn’t it naughty?” 

“Very naughty,” replied Everard, charmed with the 
music of the sweet little refined voices, a music he had 
not heard so long. The little girl reminded him of his 
old pet, AVinnie. 

“Why didn’t ’oo die?” continued the boy. “Mine 
uncle did die. The soldiers put him on the big gun, 
and shooted him when he was in the ground, and the 
music played, and mamma kied.” 

“Hush, Ernie! I am glad you got well, poor man!” 
said the little maid, demurely. 

“When I grow up,” proceeded the boy, “I sail be a 
admiral, like grandpa, and have sips and guns and a 
sword.” 

Everard congratulated him on his choice; but his little 
sister said he had better be a clergyman like their father, 
and make people good and preach. 

“ I don’t want to peach,” said the little man, patheti- 
cally. “I want to be a admiral, and have sips and guns 
and swords.” 

Then the door opened, and the lady came out, accom- 
panied by another lady in a widow’s cap, who nodded to 
the children and smiled, though she had just been weep- 


262 


THE SILENCE OF LEAN MAITLAND. 


ing, and went in; and Everard, with an intelligence 
sharpened almost to agony by the children's conversation, 
looked scarchingly from under the hat he had slouched 
over his brows at the dark-haired, dark-eyed lady, as she 
returned to her carriage, replacing the veil, which she 
had raised during her visit, evidently a sorrowful one, 
since she too had been shedding tears. 

Everard's heart throbbed almost to bursting as he met 
the dark eyes, once so full of mirth and life, and observed 
the familiar carriage of the still slender figure. It was 
Marion, beyond all doubt; Marion, altered indeed, but 
still Marion, the favorite sister, the darling of his youth — 
that traitor’s wife , as he muttered between his fiercely 
ground teeth. Twice nine years might have passed over 
her head, to judge by her looks. The joyous elasticity 
was gone from her carriage; she was pale, and there were 
lines of settled care on the once-sparkling face. 

She smiled on her children, a tender, sweet smile, but 
with no happiness in it, and hoped they had been good, 
as she got into the carriage and took the reins, not observ- 
ing the man, who stood by the pony with his breath com- 
ing gaspingly, and his heart torn by a medley of passion- 
ate emotions. He stepped back when she had taken the 
reins and whip, and touched his hat as she drove on, and 
then stopped on catching sight of him, and drew out her 
purse, whence she took a shilling, which she gave him. 
He touched his hat once more, and was again stepping 
back, when she beckoned him forward and addressed him. 

“Are you out of work?" she asked; and he replied 
slowly in the affirmative. 

“ That is strange," she continued, with a little severity. 
“ A man of your age and strength ought to have no diffi- 
culty in getting work just now. The farmers want men, 
and the dock-yard is taking in extra hands for the exten- 
sion works. I hope it is not drink?" 

“ It is nine years since I touched any drink," he 
replied, for the second time moved to discover himself 
and ask for the money indispensable to his safety, and 
for the second time restrained by the thought that she 
was the wife of that traitor , whose money would have 
been like fire to his touch. 

“ He was ill, and they did cut off him hair," explained 
the boy. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


263 


‘‘ You think of nothing but cutting hair, darling,” 
said Marion, smiling the tender, sad smile again; “I am 
sorry for that,” she added, addressing Everard kindly. 
“And you are looking for work? Have you been long 
out of hospital? Where are your friends? What! no 
friends? This is very sad. Try the dock-yard. I will 
speak for you to the officials. My father is port-admiral. 
But I am going home to-morrow; my husband preaches 
at home on Sunday. Or, stay! they want a man at once 
to mow the lawn at this cottage; their gardener is ill. 
Can you mow?” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

“Say Mrs. Maitland recommends you. I am sure I 
may recommend you. You look honest and steady. I 
wish I could help you, but I have so little time now. 
Can you read? Yes? Then I will give you a little paper 
my husband wrote specially for workingmen. Out of 
that packet, Marion.” 

The little girl’s sweet gold curls drooped over the bag, 
which she opened, and she drew out a great bundle of 
tracts, whence she took one and handed it to Everard with 
the Maitland grace and smile. Her eyes were like Lilian’s, 
and, looking into their sweet depths, Everard let the 
tract fall clumsily into his brown hand, where one of the 
lacerations was bleeding afresh, so that the paper was 
quickly stained with his blood. 

“ Oh, his poor hand, mother! ” cried the child, piti- 
fully. “ Mayn’t I give him my handkerchief to tie it 
up?” 

Everard objected, saying any rag would serve the pur- 
pose; but Marion bid him take it, saying that children 
should learn to give. Then the boy took a box half full 
of chocolate comfits and pressed it on him, “ To make 
’oo hand well,” he said. Marion smiled, and the tears 
clouded Everard’s eyes, and he remembered how the twins 
used to give away their very garments to tramps unless 
closely watched. 

He stood long looking after the pony-carriage till the 
last gleam of the two golden heads vanished, and the 
mist over his eyes fell in two great drops on his face; 
then he remembered his chance of work at the cottage, 
and walked up to the door in some trepidation, and 
pulled the bell. He thought of Marion’s tears for 


264 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


Leslie, and wondered if she would shed any if she heard 
of his death. Would she be relieved, as the others 
doubtless would, and think it best so? Did she ever 
tell the children of another uncle, their father’s friend, 
lost before they were born? a Mamma kied” when the 
soldier uncle was borne with honor to his grave; but she 
let her children play at convicts, and watch their dolorous 
daily procession for pastime. 

The door opened, “ We don’t want no tramps here!” 
cried a shrill voice; and a hand banged the door in 
his face again, and he stood confounded in the porch. 
Then he stepped back and took a survey of the house, 
and was much relieved to see the young widow at a 
writing-table, just within an open window on the ground- 
floor. 

He went up when he caught her eye. “If you please, 
ma’am, I heard you wanted a gardener,” he said, lift- 
ing his hat. 

“ And they banged the door in your face,” she replied, 
gently. “ But why did you not go to the back door? 
The girl was naturally angry.” 

The back door was another custom to learn. He fal- 
tered out an apology, and then proffered his request for 
work. “ I am not a regular gardener, but I can mow and 
do odd jobs, and badly want work, being just out of hos- 
pital,” he said. 

“I am only a lodger,” replied the widow; “but I will 
ask.” And she rang the bell and summoned the land- 
lady, and, to Everard’s surprise, asked her as a favor to 
employ him. “You see that photograph, Mrs. Brown?” 
she said, pointing to one of an officer in regimentals on 
the table before her. “Now, don’t you see a likeness?” 

“To whom? ’’asked the bewildered woman; and Mrs. 
Everard indicated Henry by a slight gesture. 

“ You will think me foolish, but I cannot mistrust one 
so like — ” Here she burst into tears, and Mrs. Brown 
lifted her hands in dismay. 

“ Poor dear! her wits are troubled by her loss,” she 
thought. “That ragged tramp like the poor gentleman in 
his smart uniform, indeed ! ” 

“ I certainly see no likeness, ma’am,” she replied, after 
along and depreciating glance at the tattered figure on the 
lawn, “but I’ll do anything to please you; and I do 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 265 

want the grass done, and even if the man isn’t 
honest — ■” 

“I was to say that Mrs. Maitland recommended me. 
I held her pony just now/’ interposed Everard. 

This ended the discussion; and in a minute or two 
Everard found himself, scythe in hand, busily mowing 
the little lawn, to the great discomfort of his torn hands, 
which he had to bind afresh as well as he could. How- 
ever, he got through his task in a couple of hours, swept 
the turf clean, nailed up a creeper or two, and did one or 
two odd jobs about the place for the damsel who had dis- 
missed him with such scorn, and did not leave the 
cottage till after dark. 

Whenever he paused in his work and looked up, he saw 
Mrs. Everard’s eyes bent wistfully upon him, and knew 
that she was comparing his features with Leslie’s. 
Marion had not recognized the playfellow and companion 
of her youth, but this woman’s eyes were made keen- 
sighted by love and sorrow, and traced out the ordinary 
fraternal resemblance beneath the disguise of the 
weather-browned, tattered vagrant. His heart warmed 
to her and to the child, who ran about, prattling and 
getting in the way of his unsuspected kinsman. If 
Leslie had been alive, he felt that he could have asked 
him for succor. 

That night he passed on a half-made rick of hay, a 
fragrant, warm, and luxurious couch, sheltered from the 
sky by a sheet of sail-cloth spread tent-wise to keep off 
showers. 

He thought it better not to seek work so near the town, 
since he had wherewith to get food for the day, so he set 
off northward, and walked as far as his wounded leg 
would let him, revolving many schemes for escape in his 
mind as he went along. He took out his tract, “ Plain 
Words for Plain Men,” and read it with inward sarcasm. 
It was beautifully written and lucidly expressed; by the 
Rev. Canon Maitland, Rector of St. Swithun’s, at some 
country town, Rural Dean; author of several religious 
works set down in due order. 

“ So he is a canon, is he?” muttered Everard, fiercely, 
as he limped along in the burning sunshine. “How long 
does it take to grow into an archbishop, I wonder? And 
how much damned hypocrisy and lying and treachery 


266 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


does it take to make one?” and be tore the paper into a 
hundred fragments and dashed it into the road-dust, 
where he stamped savagely upon it. Then he thought of 
Marion and the sweet children who were kind to the 
ragged vagrant, and his heart contracted with a wild pain. 

At noon he rested in a wood, where a thick under- 
growth of hazels made a shelter from eyes as well as from 
the sun. On the mosses and tangled roots of an ash-tree, 
he sat at the edge of the hazel wall, just where the 
ground sloped down to a little stream, which bickered 
ever its mossy pebbles with a pleasant sound, and caught 
in its tiny wave the cool lights glancing through the 
wind-stirred boughs above it. 

This was better than prison, Everard thought, as he 
stretched his weary, hot limbs at length on the dry, short 
grass, and gazed up through the gently waving, sun- 
steeped leaves at glimpses of blue sky, and listened to the 
brook’s low and soothing song and the whispering of the 
laughing leaves, and smelled the vague, delicious scent 
of the woodlands, and forgot the aching of his wounds 
and the cough which had shaken him since the chills of 
his night in the wet elm-tree. 

For the moment he wanted nothing more. It would be 
sweet, after those long years of toil and prison, to wander 
thus forever in the sweet summer weather quite alone, 
his whole being open to the half-forgotten influences of 
free earth and sky, fields and streams and woods, 
sunrises and sunsets and solemn nights marked by the 
quiet marshalling of the stars, till he was healed of the 
grevious hurts of his long agony. Even the hunted feel- 
ing, the necessity for hiding and being ever on the alert, 
even the danger that dogged every step, was refreshing 
and stimulating. This wild life was full of adventure, 
and roused his faculties, which the iron hand of bondage 
had benumbed. 

The simple meal he had purchased tasted deliciously, 
the brook’s water was like sparkling wine in comparison 
with that of the prison. For company his cell boasted at 
most an occasional spider; while here in the wood were a 
thousand friendly guests, flying, creeping, swimming, 
humming, peeping at him with bright, shy eyes, chirp- 
ing, and even singing a fragmentary song in the noonday 
heat. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


267 


A wren beguiled by his long stillness and the tempting 
crumbs he strewed, hopped up within an inch of his 
motionless hand, and pecked pertly at the unusual dainty. 
Everard remembered the wren he had seen on his last day 
of liberty, the wren which nestled on Lilian's mulf and 
let her touch him, while he and Cyril looked on, and 
Cyril said that it was Lilian's guilelessness which gave her 
such power over dumb creatures. He remembered ask- 
ing Cyril how he, who was equally guileless, had lost this 
power, and Cyril's agonized rejoinder, “Henry, I am a 
man." 


CHAPTER VI. 

After his simple meal, Everard spread his treasures on 
the grass before him, and eyed them lovingly. It was so 
long since he had possessed anything save his own soul, 
and that he could scarcely keep from the devil's clutch, 
that he enjoyed them more than those who possessed their 
own bodies and the labor of their hands, and perchance 
much more, can imagine. 

The first treasure was the box of comfits, with the gay 
picture on the lid, which had doubtless charmed the 
innocent gaze of its boy owner. It had contracted a 
slight stain, which vexed him, but he ate one of the com- 
fits slowly and luxuriously, and it made a glorious des- 
sert. By its side, carefully secured from flying away by a 
pebble, lay the little handkerchief with its initials, 
M. L. M. He had not used it for his hand, but had 
begged rags instead. 

It seemed sacrilege to make use of this sole token of 
little Marion’s sweet nature, but it would be a capital bag 
for the money which glittered on the grass before him, 
Marion's shilling among it; that he resolved to change 
only in dire need. Balfour’s pipe was the next treasure, 
and into that he put the last of the screw of tobacco, and 
smoked it with a happy heart, thinking gratefully of the 
woman who gave him meat, and of Leslie's widow and 
her kindness to him. She too had brought him out a 
cup of tea during his mowing, and the little child had 
carried him a great hunch of seed-cake, and though these 


268 THE" SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 

had been welcome enough, the gentle words and looks 
had far outweighed them. Musing on these things, he 
fell fast asleep, with the unguarded treasures by his side, 
and did not wake till late afternoon, startled, but reas- 
sured to find his possessions intact. 

He had hitherto chosen field-paths as much as possible, 
always keeping a high-road in sight, and shaping his 
course by the sun; but now it became necessary to take 
to the road, which was full of dangers for him. He met 
a policeman or two, each of whom eyed him curiously and 
doubtfully, and one of whom accosted him, and put him 
through a series of questions as to whence he came, 
whither he went, and what was his name and occupation; 
to which Everard, with inward tremors, answered calmly 
enough. 

His name was Stone; he was just out of hospital; he 
was tramping to his friends, who lived on the other side 
of London, and was glad to do odd jobs on the road, if 
the policeman could put him in the way of such. The 
policeman, who was not a very brilliant fellow, was per- 
fectly satisfied to let him pass, though he was actually, 
like all the police around, on the lookout for a man of his 
height, figure and appearance. 

As he drew near a little village, he saw a provision- 
wagon, drawn by a pair of horses, standing outside a pub- 
lic-house; the good fellow who drove it was absent, and 
doubtless refreshing himself in the cozy bar within. 
Everard passed on through the village, and read the mile- 
stone at the other end, which recorded the number of 
miles to London. He had only lessened the record by 
twelve that day, and made up his mind to tramp far into 
the night, if his strength held out. 

A great clatter suddenly rose behind him, and, turn- 
ing, he saw the provision-wagon pelting down the slop- 
ing village street with no one on the box. He rushed 
back, putting up his arms and shouting; one or two men 
followed his example, and at the top of the hill he saw 
the driver, red-faced and breathless, pursuing the horses, 
whip in hand. The runaways cantered on, and Everard 
threw himself upon them, grasping the near horse's head, 
but he was carried olf his feet and dropped; then he rose 
and caught them again, till he succeeded in stopping 
them after a very plucky struggle. The driver offered 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


260 


him a lift, which he gratefully accepted, together with 
some tobacco, and they jogged on till night, when they 
reached a country town. 

Passing the town, Everard walked on till after mid- 
night, and then slept under a haystack. Early next 
morning he went into a farm-yard, where he saw a 
farmer sending his men olf to work, and boldly asked for 
a job, and found himself, after a little hesitation and 
questioning, among a hay-making gang, with whom he 
worked till evening, obtaining permission to sleep in a 
barn that night, and the promise of work on the Monday, 
that being Saturday night. 

He was glad enough to lie still that Sunday morning, 
and rest on the bundles of straw which made his couch, 
listening to the drowsy chime of the church bells, and 
enjoying the luxury of a roof which was not a prison, 
until increasing hunger compelled him to rise soon after 
noon. As he passed through the farm-yard, he saw a red- 
armed maid feeding the pigs with skim milk and cold 
potatoes, on which he cast as wistful an eye as the prodi- 
gal did on the swine’s husks. 

He was passing on, when the farmer’s wife, rustling in 
her Sunday silk, came in on her way from church; 
Henry touched his hat and opened the gate for her, 
while she asked him rather sharply why he was hanging 
about the place. He told her that, being very weary, he 
had but just risen, and promised not to come again till 
night. 

44 We are obliged to be careful about harboring stran- 
gers,” she said, softened by his reply. 44 We never know 
who they may be; escaped convicts from Portsmouth as 
often as not. One convict got loose only the other day in 
the thunder-storm, and may be hiding about here, for all 
we know. Where are you going to get dinner? At the 
public-house? A bad place. Maria, bring out th6 pie 
that was left yesterday, and a mug of ale. And after 
you’ve eaten it, you can be off. There’s church this 
afternoon, if you’d only got clothes to go in.” 

Everard dined very happily on the low stone wall of the 
court-yard, though a meat pasty with good gravy is not 
the most convenient dish to eat with the fingers. He 
effected a total clearance, however, to the deep admira- 
tion of Maria, who watched to see that he did not make 


270 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


away with the dish and mug, and went on his way 
refreshed. 

He got paper, pen, and ink at 



afternoon, and wrote a long letter 


of his escape, and asking her to send a few pounds to 
him at the post-office of that little village. 

He would have felt less pain in applying for money to 
Lilian than to any of those on whom he had a more direct 
claim, but who had so totally cast him off. As it 
chanced, however, she had his watch and chain, which 
he had lent to Mrs. Maitland on the very morning of his 
arrest, and he only needed the value of that for his 
immediate purpose, which was to get decent working 
garments, and, as soon as his hair was grown, to try for 
a passage to America. If Lilian cared to apply to his 
family, and they offered large aid, well. He would not 
refuse help, save from Cyril; but he would not ask 
it. 

He worked on for three or four days, till the farmer 
had got all his hay in; then he was obliged to try else- 
where, and, in trying, lost several days. Every few days 
he returned to Hawkburne to see if there were any an- 
swer to his letter, and every time he got a negative from 
the postmistress a keener disappointment seized him. 
He got a day’s work here and an hour’s job there during 
the next fortnight, but no regular work. 

When he got money, he dared not spend it on a good 
meal; he knew that he must husband it for the days 
when there was no work. What with poor food and 
open-air sleeping, and the cough and rheumatism which 
he got that night in the damp tree, he fell into poor con- 
dition, and, though his hands were almost healed, and the 
gunshot-wound no longer caused him to limp, people did 
not care to employ such a gaunt, starved, hollow-cheeked 
man. 

He had passed three weeks in liberty, and had been 
several days without any work; for it was an unfortunate 
time. Haymaking was just ended, and harvest not yet 
begun; everybody was at leisure, and no one wanted any 
odd jobs done. His only chance was to wait till harvest. 
But waiting was the difficulty. He looked at the richly 
waving fields, mellowing day by day, and knew by their 
tints that it must be a week or two before the first was 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


271 


ready for the scythe. How close at hand harvest seemed 
to the farmers and their busy housewives! Visits must he 
paid and purchases made in the town because harvest was 
so near; but how far off it seemed to Everard, seen across a 
gulf of starvation! The workhouse meant certain 
detection and capture; he resolved to beg. 

He had been two days without food,, and dragged his 
faint limbs back to Hawkburne late one Saturday after- 
noon, to inquire once more for the letter and remittance, 
which surely could not fail to have arrived now. In the 
event of being absent or ill, Lilian must have got his 
letter by this time, and would certainly send a reply at 
once, even if by another hand. It was scarcely worth 
while to beg on the road back to Hawkburne, help being 
so near. He pulled himself together, and entered the 
little post-office with quite a jaunty air; but one glance at 
the postmistress was enough. She shook her head before 
he had time to speak. 

“ Nothing for you. Stone.” 

“ Are you quite sure? Have you looked?” he asked, 
turning many shades paler. 

“Looked? yes. And nice trouble Fve had with you 
worrying day after day these three weeks, and much 
thanks I get for it,” she replied, snappishly; for it was 
Saturday, and she had just taken her hands from the 
scrubbing-pail for the third time for nothing, and had had 
nobody at hand to scold all the afternoon, and the baby 
had just waked with a terrific screech. 

“I am sorry to have troubled you,” he returned; “but 
I cannot understand it. The letter was so important. 
My friends know how desperately hard up I am, and the 
remittance was my own money.” 

“I dare say. Why don’t you take and go to your 
friends? Keeping me here all day, and this blessed 
child ” — she had run and fetched the infant, which was 
screaming and kicking with fifty-baby power in her arms 
— “ a precious dear! and its mother worried with tramps 
then. There, there! ” 

“I thought, perhaps,” he added, raising his voice 
above the maddening din, “ it might have been over- 
looked. Accidents do happen, ma’am, however careful 
people are. If you would be so kind as to search 
again. ” 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 




“1 dare say, indeed! There! look yourself then, un- 
believing Jew — there, there, mother’s precious! — and get 
along out of my shop with you this minute! ” 

<<r If you would give me a sheet of paper for the love of 
Heaven, and let me write again. ” 

“ Go on out of the shop, I tell ye! ” cried the angry 
woman, deaf to all his entreaties. 

He sat down in the hedge by the roadside in utter 
despair. What if Lilian were dead? Even then others 
would read the letter. Had she forgotten him? It en- 
tered his heart like a sharp knife. But no; Lilian could 
not desert even an insect in its pain. His hands, in 
which his face rested, were wet; he found he had been 
crying in his disappointment, and he was not ashamed. 
He cried on, dimly conscious of bodily exhaustion and 
illness, and after a time got up, feeling that he must do 
something; he knew not what. 

Now that there was no longer hope to buoy him up, he 
found a difficulty in walking in his weakness and pain. 
He dragged himself to the Rectory and begged. The 
rector, a rich man and a generous, drove him from the 
door. He never encouraged tramps, Stone should go to the 
workhouse, he said. He next tried a comfortable house, 
in which some wealthy maiden ladies lived, with no bet- 
ter success. The ladies and their maids were frightened 
to death at the sight of him, and threatened to send one 
John — who, if he were other than a phantom of the ladies’ 
own conjuring, was truly of a singular taciturnity, and 
possessed of the power of making himself invisible — for 
the police. 

Everard wandered down the neat gravel path with a 
sick heart; and, turning up a lane, he came upon a cot- 
tage, where a poorly dressed woman stood nursing a child 
at the gate. He would not beg of her; but she, who 
knew him by sight and name, as having helped at hay- 
making with her husband, accosted him, and asked if he 
had got work and the remittance he expected. He shook 
his head in reply, and she asked when he had last eaten, 
when he again shook his head, and smiled faintly. She 
looked at him with a pitiful expression, and bid him 
walk in and rest, which he was glad to do. 

Then she warmed some cold tea and cold potatoes, and 
set them before him, apologizing for the poor fare, and 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


273 


observing that her husband, whom Everard knew to be a 
drinking man, had not yet come home with the weekly 
wage. Wolfishly as he had eyed the good creature’s sim- 
ple cookery, Everard found that he could not finish what 
was set before him; he was too far gone. 

That night he passed in a half-ruined and disused 
cattle-shed, not far from Hawkburne, and in the morn- 
ing he rose and trudged along the high-road to the next 
village, asking an occasional alms when he fell in with 
church-goers, but getting none. The little belfry of the 
village church, the name of which he never knew, had a 
sweet peal of bells. Their sweetness charmed him to 
tears, and he thought how pleasant it would be to go to 
church once more, a free man; so, after the congregation 
had entered the little fane, he dragged his fast-failing 
limbs into the churchyard, and looked in through the 
lower part of the lozenged-paned window, the top of 
which was open. 

The interior of the cool, dark church, with its low, 
heavy stone arches, sculptured tombs, and rustic 
worshippers, ranged in orderly quiet, was a refreshing 
spectacle to the outcast’s eyes, and, leaning on the broad 
stone window-ledge, he saw and heard all. The Psalms 
were being read, and his heart bounded strangely as he 
heard, “ When the Lord turned the captivity of Zion, 
then were we like unto them that dream; then was our 
mouth filled with laughter and our tongue with joy.” 
Surely his captivity was to be turned at last. 

The organ pealed, and the simple chants fell pleasantly 
on his ear; but his head swam so that he lost parts of the 
service, and those verses rang on through his mind. He 
roused up during the Second Lesson, and heard, with 
deep emotion, the following passages: “ I was a stranger, 
and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: sick and 
in prison, and ye visited me; ” — and a sensation of awe 
and horror fell upon him when he realized that a whole 
congregation of Christian worshippers sat listening to 
those words of terrible and tender meaning, while he was 
perishing within ear-shot, unregarded. Of some of them 
he had begged in vain; the man who was even then read- 
ing, “ Lord, when saw we £hee hungry and fed theej ” was 
the very man who drove him but yesterday from his door, 
sick and starving; of the others he felt he dared not beg. 

18 


274 


THE SILENCE OE DEAN MAITLAND. 


Then he remembered that his brother George was, per- 
haps, then reading those very words, “ When saw we 
thee in prison?” and Cyril, the traitor Cyril, in his large 
town church, was most probably reading them too, read- 
ing^them in his voice of magnificent power and pathos to 
an awed multitude. In every church in the land those 
awful and beautiful words were being read, and yet he 
knew that no help could come to him. “ Depart from 
me, ye cursed,” burst forth the rector, with sudden 
sonorous energy, and Everard shuddered and sent up an 
agonized prayer for Cyril. 

The sun was hot, and he grew weary of his place by 
the window, and sat down among the green graves 
beneath a shady tree till the congregation came out. 
Then he rose, when they were all gone, and knocked at 
the first cottage door he reached, having learned by this 
time that the poor are better almoners of hand-to-hand 
charity than the rich, because they know better what it 
is to go without a meal. Some bread was put in his 
hands, with words he was too dazed to hear; but he 
found, on trying to eat the bread, that he could not swal- 
low it. 

All that day he lay in a field, and at evening rose with 
difficulty, and asked for a night’s shelter; for the dews 
were chilly, and he knew he was now too ill to bear expos- 
ure. It was refused. 

He wandered a little further on, and sank on the bare 
earth in a sort of stupor, from which he was roused by 
the chilly dawning of the next day. He was on a bank 
beneath a large lime-tree, by the side of a brook, which 
sang in quiet undertones, like the brook in the wood 
where he dined so happily when first at liberty. He 
could not move. 

At first it seemed terrible to face death thus, outcast 
and alone, and all the scenes of his life flashed past him, 
and the strange anguish which falls on us at the thought 
of dying in the midst of sorrow, before any hope has 
been fulfilled, seized upon him with vulture beak. 

Did his mother bear him with bitter pains for this, to 
die in his prime of want and hardship? All the high 
hopes and rich promise of his youth smote upon him 
with keen anguish, and Cyril’s one message to him in 
prison, “ He shall make thy righteousness clear as the 


TEE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 275 

light, and thine innocence as the noonday,” shot across 
his brain in letters of fire. 

Some feeling of family pride revived within him, and 
he thought how much harder it was for an Everard to 
perish by the way than for one born by the wayside and 
nurtured in want. He thought of Leslie. Hid he lie 
alone thus face to face with death, when he got the 
wound which in the end proved fatal? How different 
that dying on the field of honor must have been! And 
yet, how small, how phantom-like everything earthly 
seemed in that hour of tremendous reality! Did not one 
event happen to all? 

The green fields, dewy bright in the rising sun, reeled 
before him, and he summoned his failing forces and 
applied them to prayer for all who had been dear to him. 

He was now no more alone; the sweet and awful con- 
sciousness of a Divine Presence came upon his calmed 
soul. Lilian’s beautiful voice seemed to speak passages 
full of mighty hope from the Scriptures; he heard the 
brook’s low murmur and the light whisper of the leaves 
above his head. He seemed to be resting on some kind 
arm, which was now Lilian’s, now an angel’s, and the 
rose-flushed morning sky at which he gazed opened and 
disclosed indistinct forms moving in light. He saw his 
mother’s face, Leslie’s, the baby Maitlands, so long dead; 
majestic presences, spiritual beings, souls of the noble 
dead hovered near in august silence, through which a 
mighty music of unutterable joy swept in melodious thun- 
ders. 

The vision vanished in a keen chill, and he woke to 
find rain pattering on his upturned face. The fresh 
shower renewed his sinking energies, and cleared his 
brain; some animal instinct told him day was declining. 
He knew that the bitterness of death was past. It was 
sweet to feel the soft rushing of the cool rain on his face; 
it seemed a pleasant thing to die thus, to cease from pain- 
ful being, and mingle with the kindly elements and dis- 
solve into the gracious components of the great universe. 
The brook sang on, and the leaves rustled lovingly to- 
gether, and a little wren suddenly let its strong heart of 
song loose upon the air; such a volume of melody from 
such a tiny breast! He remembered what Cyril said one 
day of the wren’s song — “ If the mere joy of animal ex- 


276 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


istence evokes such a passion of rapture, what must be 
the fullness of bliss called forth by the consciousness of 
pure spiritual life, unfettered and unclogged by sin or 
sense? ” 

It did not seem strange that Cyril was sitting there by 
his side, discoursing in the old bright way, with the old 
familiar kindliness and something more than the old radi- 
ance of youth in the blue eyes, whose light was blended 
confusingly with that of the broad heaven above, whence 
the clouds were rapidly sweeping. Cyril spoke of the 
broken Sevres vase, laughing at the childish terrors of that 
by-gone transgression. “ You got the blame, old fellow, 
and the punishment, but I got the suffering,” he said. 
“ Yes,” he added, in the thoughtfulness that was wont 
to descend upon the twins in their lightest moments; 
“ the sorrow of sorrows is sin.” 

Then Cyril seemed to fade, and only Lilian remained, 
unseen, supporting him till he lost all consciousness. 

“It is a case of want and exposure,” said the doctor, 
bending over the lifeless form beneath the tree, and ap- 
plying brandy to the closed lips. “ Stand back, if you 
please. I wonder that you picnickers let the man lie 
alone here all these hours!” 

“We thought he was drunk,” replied a young man, 
with an air of compunction. “We passed him at noon, 
and did not pass again till five, when he seemed to be 
asleep. Tramps so often sleep half the day.” 

“ And Smith saw him at nine, and he was begging in 
the village yesterday, and must have lain here all last 
night, and it is eight o'clock now. What do you think 
of that, inspector?” 

“ I think,” replied the police inspector, who had 
chanced to be driving by in his dog-cart, with a couple of 
stout constables, just after the village doctor's arrival, 
“that this is the very chap we've been wanting this three 
weeks. There will be a gunshot-wound in the leg. A 
gentleman of your profession, doctor, if this is my man. 
Not dead, is he? What, more brandy? and not a sign 
of life yet.” 

“ Nothing in the pockets but this,” said a constable, 
showing the empty comfit-box, the handkerchief marked 
“ M. L. M.” and the piece of bread given on the Sunday. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 277 

“ Ah! and his name is "Stone, and he’s been after let- 
ters at Hawkburne this three weeks, has he, sir? And 
j begged at the Kectory, did he? ” 

“We had our eye on that post-office, but never 
chanced to light on the man,” added the inspector. 
“Quick with those blankets, there! Here, doctor, isn’t 
this a gunshot-wound? He’ll be all right at the station- 
house. He can go in a cart, I suppose? Our own sur- 
geon will look to him there. If you don’t mind the 
trouble of going with him, doctor, nobody will hinder 
you. Do you think he’ll die on the way? ” 

A week or two later, there was a cheerful family group 
in Canon Maitland’s drawing-room, the windows of which 
stood wide to a small lawn sloping down to a stream, 
beyond which lay the little country town, half veiled in 
light smoke-mist. His twin-sister was there, with chil- 
dren playing on her knees, and his pretty wife sat at a 
tea-table and talked to him on various homely themes. 

“ And why do you think, Marion,” asked Lilian, after 
a thoughtful pause, during which she had not been listen- 
ing to them, “ that the man who held your pony at Burn- 
ham was the escaped convict ? ” 

“ Lilian,” interposed the canon, quickly, “ how often 
have I begged you to spare me these topics? You know 
I cannot hear that word without pain.” 

“Perhaps,” said Lilian, “ I should hear the word with 
less pain myself, if I did not know that Henry was at 
Portsmouth.” 

Cyril’s face blanched, and he was about to reply, when 
the door burst open, and Keppel Everard rushed in. 

“By George, Marion! ’’lie cried, “that runaway con- 
vict whose adventures we were reading yesterday, turns 
out to be that poor devil Henry! ” 

“ I knew it! ” cried Marion, passionately. “ Oh, Lilian, 
I might have saved him, and I did not! He was so like 
him, but so worn and old. Oh, Lilian, his eyes when he 
looked at the children^ And Amy saw the likeness to 
Leslie. How little she guessed! ” 

“ How do you know this, Keppel?” asked Cyril, in his 
deepest tones, while Marion sobbed convulsively, and 
Lilian, marble pale, clasped the child which was leaning 
upon her more tightly, and listened. 


278 


THE SILENCE OF LEAN MAITLAND. 


“ The governor of the prison told my father. Henry 
was at death’s door from exhaustion and hardship. He 
wanted instructions about burying him, but the poor fel- 
low got better, unluckily — for all parties.” 

“For heaven’s sake, calm yourself, Marion!” said 
Cyril, who was himself trembling exceedingly. “The 
children are frightened. By the way, Lilian, I never 
gave you the letter Lennie brought this morning. It got 
mislaid somehow among Winnie’s, and ought to have, 
been delivered weeks ago.” 

Lilian took the letter with an abstracted air, and was 
about to put it in her pocket, when the postmark, Hawk- 
burne, caught her eye, and a closer examination showed 
her that the handwriting, distorted and irregular as a 
wounded hand had made it, yet faintly resembled Henry’s. 
She tore it open, read it, and fainted for the first and 
last time in her life. 


PART III. 


“ I charge thee, fling away ambition: 

By that sin fell the angels ; how can man then, 

The image of his Maker, hope to win by ’t? 

Love thyself last : cherish those hearts that hate thee.” 


CHAPTER I. 

One bright summer morning in the year 1881, a man 
was travelling through the heart of Devonshire to Exeter 
in a first-class carriage, the only other occupant of which 
was a comfortable-looking clergyman, who was evidently 
able to digest the Thirty-nine Articles and a good daily 
dinner with equal facility, and whose parish, no doubt, 
showed a happy sterility of evil-livers and dissenters, 
with an equally happy fertility of tithes. This clergy- 
man's kindly, fresh-complexioned face assumed an expres- 
sion of singular concern and perplexity whenever he 
looked, as he did furtively from time to time under cover 
of his newspaper, at his fellow traveller. The latter was 
a gaunt, haggard man, with a worn and wasted face, 
which was partially covered by a beard, the even and 
sharply cut ends of which showed that it had only 
recently been allowed to grow, and was lighted by dark, 
deeply sunken eyes of a kindly but singularly wistful ex- 
pression; the beard as well as the hair was grizzled. 

The man looked about fifty or five-and-fifty; his shoul- 
ders were bent, and he walked with a stiff and labored gait. 
His manner was shy and uneasy; he wore gloves, which 
he never removed; and his dress consisted of a badly made 
and ill-fitting suit of gray. The clergyman recognized 
this suit of gray as that which is supplied to discharged 
prisoners and soldiers. 

It was scarcely possible to recognize in this bowed and 
279 


280 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


broken man in the ill-fitting gray suit, the handsome, 
light-hearted young fellow who travelled down to Oldport 
with another clergyman only eighteen years before, full of 
health and hope and intellect, and talking gayly of all 
things in heaven and earth. And yet, if you looked care- 
fully at him, there was the same direct and clear gaze in 
the candid brown eyes, the same sweetness about the lips, 
the same look of moral strength in the whole face. 

But there was no longer the air of intellectual power or 
the confident calm of a man whose fate is in his own 
hands, and who means to mold it to noble purposes. 
Eighteen years of intense suffering, heroically endured, 
had marked the face with an unspeakable nobility and 
gentleness — an expression which deeply impressed and 
mystified the clergyman opposite him, who knew per- 
fectly that the owner of this sublime face must have left 
Dartmoor but an hour or two before. 

Yes, Everard was free at last. The day for which he 
had sighed through all that furnace of long years had 
actually dawned. He might come and go beneath the 
broad heaven above England as he listed. The fever of 
this thought had kept him awake through the long hours 
of the last night in prison; and yet, when he turned his 
back on the grim buildings of Dartmoor, he could 
scarcely see them for tears. 

He left friends behind those stern walls — friends who 
would feel his departure as an irreparable loss, friends for 
whom his heart bled. In the wide world into which he 
was thrust alone, after a lifetime spent in unlearning its 
ways, he had but one friend; one who had seen him last 
in the flower of youth and intellect, and who, in spite of 
her long-tried and unswerving devotion, might shrink 
from the wreck he now was, ruined in health, shattered 
in nerves, and with blasted prospects. 

These thoughts made him turn a wistful gaze upon the 
purple slopes of Dartmoor whenever a turn of the line 
brought it into sight. The rapture he had felt in free- 
dom on his temporary escape, nine years before, could 
nevermore throb so strongly within him. Those later 
years had wrought more cruel effect upon him; the pri- 
vations of that brief spell of freedom — which neverthe- 
less, was in his memory like the very breath of heaven — 
and the illness which followed them had more surely 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLANB. 281 

sapped his strength. His captivity had been more 
rigorous after that; he had worn irons. The routine had 
now more effectually numbed his faculties* so that at last 
it had grown to be a necessity; and now that he found 
himself thrown on his own resources* and dependent on 
no will hut his own* he was like a lost child* half fright- 
ened and bewildered by the pettiest responsibilities of 
life. 

He dared not encourage the good clergyman's kindly 
attempts at general conversation* and the paper he lent 
him was as if written in an unknown tongue. Who 
could understand the Times of to-day* if the events of 
the last twenty years were a blank to him? Empires had 
disappeared from Europe since Everard’s incarceration; 
fresh empires had risen; English society and English 
public opinion had undergone a total change; English 
politics had been radically altered; more than one revo- 
lution had been accomplished; old landmarks were swept 
away; the world had made mighty strides onward* for 
better or for worse; and of all this he knew nothing. 

At Exeter he felt more at ease. Leaving the station 
on foot* he went into the streets of the ancient city* not 
heeding the cries of cabmen aud hotel touts* not dream- 
ing that he could be addressed as “ Sir," who had so long 
been only No. 62, and pleasantly excited to find himself 
moving unhindered among crowds of free fellow-creatures. 
The cathedral bells were pealing merrily for some festi- 
val; soldiers were marching with bright music through 
the streets* which were thronged with women and chil- 
dren in light summer dresses. How beautiful they all 
looked* after the ghastly figures of the convicts in their 
hideous garb of uniform shame! and how delicious was 
the free air and sense of motion at will! 

He entered the first tailor’s shop* and got a suit of 
ready-made clothes* which he put on there and then* 
not unmindful of a curious smile on the shopman’s 
features at sight of the gray suit. Here also he pur- 
chased a suitable outfit for a few weeks; then he got a 
portmanteau* and* feeling a different being in a dark and 
well-made suit* he got himself some boots at a fashionable 
bootmaker’s; and then went to some dining-rooms and 
ate his first free meal with rising spirits, and was no 
longer startled when the waiter addressed him respect- 


282 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


fully, and waited on his behests with “ Yes, sir,” and 
“No, sir.” 

When he returned to the station and took his seat in a 
third-class carriage to London, he looked what he was, a 
gentleman, save for his hands, which he kept carefully 
gloved. He had many travelling companions now, having 
chosen to go first-class in the gray suit in the hope of 
being alone and unnoticed, and to the conversation of 
these he listened with a kind of awe; for none of them 
were criminals — all were free, and .they spoke of things 
and moved in a life of which he had been long ignorant. 

He had purchased some periodicals with a strange joy 
in the novelty and freedom of the act, but he could not 
bring his attention to bear upon them; his mind was too 
full. He could not even listen to the conversation of his 
fellow-travellers, which had at first such a strange interest 
for him. 

He gazed out upon the swift-rolling summer landscape, 
and rejoiced in the roses which starred the passing gar- 
dens in June luxury, and wondered if it were really he. 
His captivity was turned, and he was indeed like unto 
them that dream. It was so sweet, and yet so terribly 
sad. Not only were youth and strength and hope gone, 
but the very world from which he had been so suddenly 
torn was almost swept away. Leslie was dead, and 
Marion and Mrs. Maitland and his father, the stout old 
admiral, and they had never known that he was innocent. 
Did they know now, he wondered, and could they bear 
the thought of the other’s guilt, or were all things 
earthly to them as if they had never been ? And of 
those who remained, how much of the old selves he 
remembered still lived ? The long years had had no 
power to touch Lilian’s loyalty, but what had they done 
to herself ? 

The train rushed clattering into a large station and 
stopped. Some of his fellow-travellers got out, disinter- 
ring their buried parcels and wraps with cheerful bustle. 
A young lady begged his pardon for incommoding him — 
how strange the slight courtesy seemed ! — others wished 
him good morning, and he returned the salutation with 
a dim feeling of transgression; he could not yet realize 
that he might speak without leave. 

A girl with a sad face offered roses at the windows, and 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


283 


brightened when he bought some. He had touched no 
flowers since he gave those to Lilian on the fatal Hew 
Year’s Eve. Those were virgin white, which should have 
been red with blood; these were warm crimson and gold. 

It was dark night when they reached London. Ever- 
ard scarcely knew what to do in the tumult and din of a 
great metropolitan station. At last he found himself 
and his brand-new portmanteau in a hansom, driving 
toward a hotel he mentioned, half afraid it might have 
disappeared from the face of the earth. 

At the time of his conviction the law which forfeited 
the property of felons was still in force, so that he would 
have been penniless had not the admiral left him an equal 
share with his other children at his death, which occurred 
some five years back. This little property — which was, 
of course, in the hands of trustees — had been accumulat- 
ing during those years, and would now afford him a mod- 
erate income, which he still hoped to increase by the ex- 
ercise of his profession. He was to see the late admiral’s 
man of business on the morrow, and when that was done 
he scarcely knew where to turn. 

He could not go to Lilian with the prison taint still 
upon him; the thought of that was unendurable. She 
did not know the exact date at which he was to be set at 
liberty, so he decided to spend a week or two in getting 
accustomed to a free life, in ridding himself of some of 
his enormous ignorance of every-day affairs, and in purg- 
ing his memory of prison degradations. Then he had 
messages to deliver to the friends of his fellow-prisoners, 
and set about that at once. 

London oppressed him with its immensity and tumult 
and the awful sense of loneliness which it produced; so 
after a few days he went into the country, resolving to 
stop wherever fancy prompted. During those few days 
he had looked into much new literature, with an appalling 
sense of being left far behind his age. The medical and 
scientific journals gave him the keenest stab; science had 
made such mighty strides without his aid, and the 
theory, the darling theory which was to effect a revolu- 
tion in medical science, had already been formed by 
another and accepted by the world. 

Perhaps country air would restore his shattered nerves. 
There is no nurse or healer like Nature; to her kind arms 


284 


THE SILENCE OF LEAN MA1TLANL. 


he would flee for refuge. But along that very line he 
had travelled down to Malbourne with Cyril nearly 
twenty years ago, and the memory of it tore his heart. 
“ An ascetic is a rake turned monk,” he had told Cyril, 
little dreaming what a home-thrust he was giving. And 
here was the massive cathedral, and here the towers of 
Belminster, a place associated with scenes so agonizing. 
Yet he remembered his jest to Cyril about the bishop. 

He got out at Belminster, attracted by the strange fas- 
cination which belongs to scenes of past suffering, and, 
leaving his things at the station, strolled leisurely down 
the steep street, and looked with infinite compassion at 
the jail in which he had endured such agony The place 
was not altered; people might have been strolling 
about just the same while his torture was going on. 

There was the lovely old Gothic cross, standing a soli- 
tary relic of dead centuries, and wondering silently at the 
feverish present; there were the old houses, jutting out 
upon pillars over the street and hiding the dark shops; 
there, finally, was the hoary cathedral, girdled about by 
its lofty trees and its green, quiet close, into which he 
strolled with a feeling of sweet refreshment. His eyes 
rested lovingly on the pleasant scene, so full of old world 
associations, so suggestive of all things soothing and 
sweet; a place in which one must think of past things 
and of things eternal, and yet which is linked so har- 
moniously with things passing and the little life of to- 
day. 

He strolled into the gray, vast, echoing interior, and, 
sitting down opposite the open door, lost himself in a 
pleasant dream. How sweet it would be to live there 
under the great minster’s shadow, within sound of the 
holy bell; to lead a gentle, holy, uneventful life, pacing 
daily that rich green turf, looking on those great trees 
and red-roofed houses, and on the the pillared cloister 
yonder, and on the light-springing arches of the Deanery, 
as one passed to and fro, lowly, perhaps, but calm and 
happy! Something light fluttered between the slender 
black pillars of the Deanery entrance. It was a young 
lady in a gay summer dress, who passed out and walked 
along by the old cloister with an indescribable grace in 
the carriage of her slim figure. 

The sight of her youth and beauty called up pleasant 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


285 


visions of sweet and tranquil home life— life rich with 
love and duty, and adorned with culture and refinement; 
and a little sigh escaped him in spite of himself, when he 
thought of the possibilities of life, and remembered what 
he had missed in his long agony. People began to stream 
in slowly by twos and threes, and he observed that the 
bells were chiming languidly; visitors with guide-books 
went out or moved choir ward; a dark, thin young clergy- 
man, with a rapt face and ascetic lips, ascended the choir- 
steps, and recalled the Cyril of twenty years ago with 
strange vividness; the great organ began to boom; the 
choristers paced slowly in, heavenly boy faces showing 
above their white robes, or men with worn and rugged 
faces; the bright silk hoods of the clergy gleamed as they 
passed; evensong began. 

Everard did not dream of entering the choir; the 
thought of mingling with others on equal terms even in 
an act of worship was as yet far from him. He felt him- 
self a dweller on the outskirts of humanity; it was as yet 
a great boon to be allowed merely to look on without 
rebuke. So the solemn words and heavenly music came 
echoing beneath the dim arches brokenly to his far-off: 
ears, and their peaceful spell drew him gradually nearer 
to the choir. 

At last the anthem began, and his soul melted within 
him beneath the passion of the full-voiced strain, and he 
stole silently up the matted steps with bowed head, his 
consciousness merged in the meaning which the mellow 
voices strove with conflicting endeavor to make clear. 
The glorious tumult increased till it dissolved in a 
triumph of harmony; and then above it, like a lonely 
sea-bird soaring over a sea of stormy, foam-tipped billows, 
there rose a single boy’s voice, so sweet and pure, so full 
of unconscious and unutterable pathos, that Everard 
trembled as he heard it, and stole on to the very gates of 
the sanctuary to listen. Higher and higher the solitary 
boy- voice rose, till it seemed as if it must be finally lost 
in some clear heaven of ineffable sweetness; there it 
hovered and paused, and then descended, rising and fall- 
ing again upon the pinions of strong melody, till it fell 
at length half wearied into the sea of deep and mellow 
harmony. 

The listener outside the sanctuary gate gazed in in a 


286 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


tumult of unspeakable feeling, not knowing what memo- 
ries and hopes and longings the beautiful boy’s voice 
awakened within him, but vaguely conscious that he had 
stood thus before in some far-off forgotten time, seeing 
all his lost youth flash by him, and realizing the spell of 
Lilian’s long-missed presence once more. 

The anthem died away, and Everard came to himself, 
and thought how unfitted he was for life, with a nervous 
system so sensitive, so liable to escape control, and he 
remembered the scorn which once mingled with his pity 
for such weaklings. He scorned no man now. 

The chorister with the beautiful voice had a face of 
equal charm — a face from which Everard could scarcely 
avert his eyes. The other boys looked roguish enough, 
though they were very well behaved — pattern choristers, 
indeed; but this lad’s face and demeanor had a singular 
pathos, and his eyes, instead of being bent, as the others 
were, on the desk, had a forward or upward gaze dur- 
ing his singing. He evidently knew all his music by 
heart. 

When the service was over, and the worshippers had left 
the building, Everard strolled down the nave, looking at 
different monuments, and spoke to the verger, whose offer 
to guide him he had refused. 

“ I know the cathedral well,” he said, “ but I have not 
seen it for many years.” 

“ You may have travelled and seen a sight of cathedrals 
since, but you won’t see many to beat Belminster,” said 
the verger, proudly. 

“Not many; and it is in better order than in former 
times. And what a very well-behaved choir! I suppose 
your dean is a good man.” 

“Yes, sir; the dean is very particular about the cathe- 
dral. He takes an interest in every creature about it, 
too. We all have to mind our p’s and q’ s, I assure you, 
and we’d do anything for him. He’s that taking in his 
ways, to be sure.” 

“And who is your dean?” asked Everard, indiffer- 
ently, as he was turning away. 

“ Bless my soul alive!” exclaimed the verger; “don’t 
you know who the Dean of Belminster is? Excuse me, 
sir, but where have you been not to have heard of Dean 
Maitland? ” 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 287 

Everard was glad he had turned away, and he did not 
reply for a moment. 

/'No doubt I appear very ignorant/' he said at length, 
with a smile, “ but I have not been near Belminster for 
this twenty years/’ 

“But not to know Dean Maitland! Why, all the 
world knows the great dean. The books he has written, 
the things he’s done! Nothing can be done without 
Dean Maitland. He’s the greatest preacher in the 
Church of England. They’re going to make him Bishop 
of Warham soon. Why, bless you, sir, when Dean Mait- 
land preaches in Westminster Abbey, extra police have to 
be put on, and people wait outside for hours. To think 
you never heard of Dean Maitland!” and the verger 
looked up and down Everard, scanning him as if he were 
some strange natural phenomenon. 

“The greatest preacher?” repeated Everard, his 
heart throbbing . painfully. “ What is his Christian 
name ? ” 

“ The greatest, and the bishop. Bishop Oliver, the 
Bishop of Belminster, is the next, and some think he 
runs the dean close,” replied the verger, with satisfac- 
tion; “ Christian name, Cyril. You should hear him 
preach, sir, you should indeed. People come down to 
Belminster on purpose. He preaches to-morrow in the 
nave. A series of evening lectures to working-men, and 
the dean takes his turn to-morrow. ” 

“ I will come,” said Everard; and he moved away, and 
stood gazing abstractedly at the ancient font, consumed 
with the strangest excitement. 

“It is very old, sir,” said a sweet voice behind him; 
and, turning, he found himself face to face with the 
chorister who sang the solo. 

He was a slight, delicate lad, some ten years of age, 
with dark hair waved over his pure white brow, and 
beautiful blue eyes gazing with a strange pathos from the 
well-featured face; and the singular beauty of his voice 
was enhanced by the purity of his accent, which was that 
of a gentleman. 

“Old indeed,” returned Everard. “Old Oliver 
couldn’t batter that; it is too solid.” 

“ You know, of course, that he smashed the west win- 
dow,” said the lad, pointing to the great window, with 


m 


THE SILENCE OF LEAN MAITLAND. 


its singular pattern, formed by piecing the broken frag- 
ments of richly colored glass together. 

Everard replied in the affirmative, and moved on, the 
boy accompanying him, and discussing the different 
objects of interest with singular intelligence. 

“ You do not tire of the cathedral, though you sing in 
it daily? ” asked Everard. 

“No, I never tire of it,” he replied gazing dreamily 
round; “ it is such a beautiful place. I love the vastness 
of it. I spend hours here; it is my home.” 

He had insensibly stolen his small hand into Everard’s, 
who was thrilled deeply by the warm, soft grasp, and he 
now led him on to show him an ancient tomb. 

“ Have you been a chorister long? ” Everard asked. 

“ Only since we came to Belminster three years ago; 
then I was the smallest boy in the choir.” He did not 
go to school, he said, in reply to a query; he had a tutor. 
“My name is Maitland,” he added; “Everard Mait- 
land.” 

Everard’s hand tightened convulsively over the child’s 
slight fingers, and he gazed searchingly in his face, 
which betrayed no surprise at the intent gaze. 

“ Ah! the dean’s son,” he said after a long pause. 

“Yes,” he replied, with a proud little air; “the 
dean’s son. Do you know my father? Have you heard 
him preach?” 

“ Not of late.” 

“He is a very good father,” said the boy; “and I am 
his only son. People think him great, but he is better 
than great; he is good. We have no mother. What 
time is it?” he added, as Everard drew out his watch to 
conceal the tumult that was stirring within him. 

Everard silently turned the dial toward him for answer. 

“I can hear it tick,” said the child, regretfully; “but 
I cannot see it.” 

“Not see it! ” exclaimed Everard, in surprise. 

“No, sir; I am blind. You are surprised? ” be added, 
after a pause; “people always are. I was born blind, and 
I have been trained to be as independent as possible. I 
show it more in a strange place. I know every inch of 
the cathedral, I love it so.” 

“ Blind !” echoed Everard, at last; “and you are his 
only son?” 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


289 


“ His only son. It is a terrible grief to him. It is little 
to me; my life is very happy, and my father is so very 
kind. And they let me sing in the choir and play Hie 
organ. Few boys have such pleasures as I." 

“ You bear your affliction manfully,” said Everard, lay- 
ing his hand tenderly on the child's head and gazing 
thoughtfully on him for a space. “But how can you 
enjoy the cathedral if you cannot see its beauty?” 

“ I can feel it. I have heard its different parts so 
often described, and I know its history so well. Then I 
can hear by the echoes how vast it is, and how lofty, and 
the way in which the music rolls about it describes its 
shape. I could feel you standing at the font just now, 
and I know when you are looking at me. I knew that 
you were a good man the moment you spoke. Your 
voice is familiar to me. You see, we blind people have 
other senses to make up, sir.” 

The child smiled as he said this, a smile that touched 
Everard to his heart's core. Cyril and Lilian smiled thus, 
but the child's smile had a sweetness beyond theirs, one 
which is only born of suffering. 

They had now reached the open door, through which 
entered the reflected warmth of the sunshine, which the 
blind boy said he could feel, and here they parted. 

“Good-by, sir,” said the boy, pressing liis hand, and 
directing upon him the strange unaware gaze of the blind. 

“We have had a charming talk,” he added, in Cyril's 
own fascinating manner. 

“Good-by, dear little fellow, and God bless you,” 
replied Everard, returning the pressure of the delicate 
hand. “ Stay,” he added, as the child stepped out into 
the sunshine. “ Had you not a brother named 
Ernest?” 

“Oh, yes,” he answered; “they say he was such .a 
strong, healthy boy. He died when I was a baby. My 
poor father has lost many sons and daughters, and I can 
never be anything but a care to him. He has only my 
sister to comfort him. Good-by, sir; I shall be late;” 
and, taking off his hat once more, he sprang down the 
steps and across the pavement, to an iron railing which 
here fenced the turf. Everard watched him as he vaulted 
it easily, and dashed, as seeing boys dash, headlong across 
the green, making a slight turn to avoid a collision with 


290 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


a solemn clergyman, who lifted his hat to him; and then 
flying straight under the slender arches of the Deanery 
entrance, where he vanished from sight. 

“ Poor young gentleman!" said the verger, who was 
standing behind Everard, chinking a shilling the child 
had given him. “ Nothing pleases him so much as show- 
ing the cathedral to strangers, and keeping his blindness 
from them. Many and many a one he's took in. But he 
always gives a verger a. shilling after taking a party 
round; he wouldn't take a man's bread out of his mouth. 
It's a sore trial to the dean, sir, you may depend upon it. 
It was trouble to his mother caused it, they say. Just 
before he was born she went through a deal in her mind, 
and was never the same again. And that affected the 
boy's nerves, specially the optic nerves, and he was born 
blind. Pity, isn't it? We shall miss Master Everard when 
the dean is Bishop of Warham." 

“No doubt," said Everard, moving abstractedly away, 
his eyes riveted on the Deanery; “ no doubt." 

Lilian had gradually ceased to mention Cyril in her 
letters; indeed, since Marion's death, she had not men- 
tioned him at all, and Everard had never during the 
whole of his imprisonment named the name of the man 
he had so loved, and for whom he had suffered so cruelly. 
And now he found him the great Dean Maitland, too 
great to be merely the Dean of Belminster; he belonged 
apparently to the higher order of deans, like Dean Swift 
and Dean Stanley, and was moreover, Bishop-elect of 
Warham. And Warham was the greatest see in England; 
its bishops had ranked as princes in olden days. There 
was but one greater dignity in the Church — that of arch- 
bishop. Everard paused opposite the Deanery, and looked 
long upon it, while a singular conflict of feelings raged 
within him. 

On this very spot, eighteen years ago, Cyril himself 
had stood, an obscure curate, while Everard was under- 
going his terrible ordeal before the judge, and had 
reflected, in spite of the tumult within him, upon the 
advantages of being a dean. 

He had looked with keen outward observation, as 
Everard was looking now, on the majestic pile of the gray 
cathedral, rising above the sedate red roofs and gables of 
the quiet and dignified close; on the same elms and limes. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


291 


leafless then in the March sunshine, and had heard the 
rooks cawing in their lofty circles overhead, with the same 
suggestions of boyhood and home and the breezy downs 
about Malbourne; there he had stood, though Everard did 
not know it, and fought an inward battle in which his 
soul's best powers were overthrown. 

Some such battle raged within Everard now. He 
thought of his long agony, and the crimes which caused 
it; he thought of his heart's best friendship, and the 
treachery which betrayed it; he repeated to himself with 
various intonations of scorn and indignation, “ Dean 
Maitland, Bishop of Warham; " he thought of the guile- 
less child with his angel voice and his lifelong affliction, 
he thought of his own broken health and ruined life; he 
thought of Lilian wasting her youth in loneliness, and 
asked himself how he could forgive the traitor for whose 
crime he had suffered — the traitor . who dressed in fine 
linen, and dwelt in palaces among the greatest in the 
land, while the betrayed wore his heart out in a prison, 
clothed in the garb of shame, and herded with the scum 
and off-scouring of vice. He could not bear these dis- 
tracting thoughts; he turned with a gesture of fierce 
indignation, and, striding hurriedly along the close, 
passed beneath the Gothic gateway, in whose angle was 
niched a tiny church, passed along amid a crowd of 
happy school-boys in front of the college, and did ■ not 
breathe freely till he found himself once more in the 
bustling High Street. 


CHAPTER II. 

The Deanery drawing-room looked out upon a soft 
stretch of lawn, partly shaded by some magnificent trees, 
and bounded by a delicious old garden with warm red 
walls, on which fruit was ripening in the July sun. The 
mullioned casements, with their diamond panes, stood 
open to let in the sunny air laden with the scent of car- 
nations, roses, and mignonette. All that refined taste 
backed by a long purse could do toward making a room 
beautiful and suggestive of art and culture, as well as 


292 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


perfectly comfortable, had been done to this room, 
which, as everybody knew, had been arranged by the 
dean and his twin sister. Nor did the apartment lack 
the crowning grace of a charming mistress; the dean’s 
only daughter, a girl of fifteen or sixteen, but apparently 
much older. 

She sat, becomingly dressed in some light, fresh mate- 
rial, near an open casement by a low table, on which a 
tea-service was placed, and was talking in the liquid 
Maitland voice to several ladies and three young and 
seemingly unmarried men, two of whom were clergymen, 
while the third, the evident object of the black-coat’s 
dislike, which he as evidently returned, had something 
about him which proclaimed the dashing hussar. He 
answered to the name of Lord Arthur. 

“ Benson,” said Miss Maitland, addressing a servant, 
“ tell the dean that I insist upon his coming in to tea. 
Say who are here. It would serve him right. Lady 
Louisa,” she added, “if I got you to go and rout him out 
of his den.” 

“My dear child, the mere suggestion terrifies me!” 
returned the lady. “ Imagine the audacity of rushing 
in upon the dean, when he might be making one of his 
lovely sermons or his clever books! ” 

“By the way,” interposed one of the curates, “what 
an appreciative notice there is in this week’s Guardian 
of the dean’s ‘ Epistle to the Romans!’ Did you see it. 
Miss Maitland?” 

“ Oh, you don’t mean to say he is as clever as all that, 
to make a new Epistle to the Romans!” exclaimed a 
very young lady, whose simplicity was greatly admired. 

The door now opened, and the dean appeared among 
his guests, making each feel that he or she was the 
special object of his welcoming words and smiles. After 
this greeting, his glance ran anxiously round the room 
and across the garden in search of something that he 
missed. “ Where is Everard?” he then asked. 

“ Probably in the cathedral,” replied Marion. “ He 
has not returned from even-song.” 

“ You were not at even-song, Mr. Dean,” said a lady. 
“It is a pity, for Everard excelled himself in the 
anthem.” 

“He did indeed,” chimed in the young curate with the 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 293 

rapt face. “ I never heard anything truer or sweeter 
than that high C of his.” 

“Poor dear child! his voice is a great consolation to 
him,” sighed the dean, toying comfortably with his tea- 
spoon. 

“ I wonder if that voice will last? ” asked Lord Arthur. 
“ Of course I mean, will it change into a good man's 
voice?” 

“ Probably, with health and good management. So 
many good boy-trebles are strained by overwork, and 
crack hopelessly at the change,” replied the father. 

“ Now, Lady Louisa, begin your siege,” said the young 
hostess. “If you don't do everything she asks you, papa, 
you will get no more tea, remember.” 

“ This is alarming,” smiled the dean. “ Lady Louisa, 
I appeal to your generosity not to exact too much from a 
helpless victim.” 

“ Pile on the agony. Aunt Louisa,” cried Lord Arthur. 
“/ Vce victis!’ remember.” 

“ Your nephew's war-cry. The ruthless soldier flings 
his sword into the scale,” said the dean. 

“ Yes, and I'd fling myself after it, if you would only 
come to Dewhurst next week,” added the hussar. 
“ You’ve never seen the old place, dean, and my father is 
dying to have you there, and so is my mother.” 

“And your aunt,” added Lady Louisa, laughing; 
“not to mention yourself.” And she proffered her 
request, in the form of an invitation from her sister-in-law 
to the dean and his daughter to dine and sleep at the 
ancient historic ducal castle one day in the following 
week. 

“There, papa,” said Marion with pretty imperiousness; 
“ all you have to do is to name the day.” 

“Alas! ” sighed her father, “next week is quite filled 
up.” 

“Oh, but you must come next week,” urged Lady 
Louisa. “We shall be alone then, and able to enjoy 
you. Indeed, the duchess will never forgive you if you 
do not come.” 

“ To incur the duchess’s displeasure grieves me to the 
heart,” replied the dean. 

“ Also mine,” added the lady, whom some people held 
to be well disposed to wed the widowed ecclesiastic. 


294 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


She was about five-and-thirty and of majestic presence, if 
not surprisingly well favored. 

“ That,” he returned, “ would reduce me to absolute 
despair; yet I am firm. I am tied to the stake.” 

It was while the dean was being thus implored, coaxed, 
and threatened, and while one or two people who would 
have been ready to depart this life in peace after an invi- 
tation to the great duke’s show-place were listening with 
unspeakable envy, that a servant stole up to the dean and 
appeared anxious to attract his attention. 

“Well, Benson?” he said at length, having disposed of 
the question of the visit. 

“'A young gentleman, sir,” said the man, in a low 
tone— “ refuses to give his name; says it is private busi- 
ness of importance.” 

“ Why did you not say I was engaged? ” 

“ I did, sir. He said his business was urgent.” 

“Let him wait in the library.” 

“I wonder how they make bishops, Mr. Dean?” asked 
Lady Louisa, mischievously. “ Do they send messengers 
post-haste to offer mitres upon their knees just when peo- 
ple are having tea comfortably?” 

The dean smiled a pleased smile, and observed that he 
had hitherto had no experience of being made a bishop; 
and a lady present remarked that a certain paper had 
mentioned his acceptance of the see of Warham as a fact, 
and further ventured to ask if the journal in question was 
right. 

The dean smiled again. “A man who declines such 
an office when duly chosen by the rightful authorities 
incurs a tremendous responsiblity,” he said, with unusual 
gravity; and the rumor immediately went forth that he 
had accepted. 

He then withdrew with an apology. “Perhaps we had 
better not keep the mitre waiting too long, Lady Louisa,” 
he observed to that lady, with his peculiar smile, as he 
went out. 

He reflected, as he left the room, that he might do 
worse than marry Lady Louisa; also that Lord Arthur, 
who though a younger son, was rich enough to marry as 
he pleased, undoubtedly meant business with regard to 
Marion. Lady Louisa was amiable, accomplished, not 
dowerless, pleasing, and of a suitable age. What could a 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN ‘MAITLAND. 


295 


man want more? The Bishop of Warham and Lady Louisa 
Maitland sounded well. And yet the Bishop of Warham, 
leading a life of widowed loneliness because his conscience 
put the narrowest meaning on the phrase “ husband of 
one wife,” might have more power over men's minds. 
But then Dean Maitland belonged to that class of men to 
whom single blessedness is a curse, and his six years' wife- 
lessness had weighed sorely upon him, and he had but two 
children, one hopelessly afflicted. 

Reaching his study, he rang the bell. ‘"Where is Mr. 
Obermann?” he asked of the servant, meaning his son's 
tutor. 

“ Out, sir.” 

“And Miss Mackenzie?” — Marion's governess and com- 
panion. 

“ Out, sir. Her Girls' Friendly Meeting day.” 

“ Which that young rascal, Arthur, well knew,” 
thought the dean. Then he ordered that a maid should 
search the cathedral and close for the blind boy, keeping 
him in sight, but not accosting him, unless he should 
break his bounds, which were the cathedral precincts, so 
careful was the dean of his only son. “ Show the young 
man in here, Benson,” he said in conclusion. 

It never struck any visitor, much less this unsophisti- 
cated youth, that the dean's easy pose in his library-chair 
by his writing-table, which was so placed that the light 
from the lattice fell sideways from behind him, leaving 
him in the complete shadow of the rather dark wain- 
scoted room, yet fully illuminating his books and papers 
and the chair fronting him, in which he motioned his 
unknown guest to take a seat, was a calculated one; but 
it certainly had uncommon advantages, since not a quiver 
of the penitent's lip, not a line of his face or a movement 
of his body was lost, while the priest's countenance was 
but dimly seen in the shade. 

Since the production of his popular devotional work, 
“ The Secret Penitent,” Dean Maitland's ghostly counsel 
had been sought by men and women from far and near, 
chiefly from far, and chiefly, though the gentle reader 
will probably doubt this assertion, by men. These men 
were desirous of remaining unknown, and sometimes 
gave names which they said were assumed, sometimes 
none at all. 


296 THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 

Very strange tales had been told in that pleasant little 
study, in the sight of that finely carved ebony and ivory 
crucifix and those beautiful proof engravings of cele- 
brated religious pictures, holy families, ascensions, con- 
spicuously among them a copy of the Gethsemane which 
hung in the study at Malbourne. Cyril imagined that 
the nameless youth was another of these penitents, and 
received him with a certain tenderness in his stately 
manner, which he knew was well calculated to unlock 
the sealed recesses of the heart. 

It was a tall, handsome, well-built youth, whose features 
and expression kindled a vague disquiet in the deary's 
breast, such an irrational mental discomfort as imagina* 
tive people experience at times, and distinctively fear tc 
analyze. 

He entered the room with a confident step and bearing, 
looking boldly forward with an almost arrogant self-asser- 
tion in his gaze, which was quickly subdued by the digni- 
fied courtesy of Dean Maitland — a man with whom, 
despite his unvarying politeness, which was almost court- 
liness, no man ever dared take a liberty. It seemed as if 
the youth, entering with his bristles all on end, had ex- 
pected hostility or at least repression, and, receiving a 
suave cordiality instead, was for the moment confounded. 
He felt himself enveloped in a blue radiance from the 
dean’s strangely beautiful and powerful eyes, which 
searched him, measured him, explored him to his remotest 
recesses, and reduced all his pretensions to nothing. 

A man sitting at a table with the implements of his 
daily occupation before him has a great advantage over 
one who sits unoccupied in a chair in the full light, for 
the express purpose of talking. This the dean knew, and 
he never committed the error of walking into a room to 
begin an interview with a person he intended to influence, 
though no man knew better than he how to walk into a 
room. 

Sitting at ease in his wooden chair, with the open lat* 
tice, picturesquely tangled with invading roses and ivy, 
behind him; with his melodious voice and refined accent, 
new to his listener’s ears; with his graceful limbs showing 
to advantage in his black dress with shorts and gaiters; 
and with his well-formed hands in harmony with his 
severely cut features, which, however, were only diml) 


THE SILENCE OF LEAN MAITLAND. 


297 


seen, he cast a spell over his visitor; he suggested, fur- 
ther, that harmonious blending of aristocratic piety 
which is peculiar to the English dean, and perhaps to the 
French abbe before the Revolution, and which had so 
fascinated his own youthful gaze. He made a picture in 
the oak wainscoted room, with its latticed casements, 
ecclesiastic adornments and suggestions of honored 
antiquity, which quite overpowered the unaccustomed 
gaze of the younger man, who never forgot it. 

The dean's practiced eye soon saw that his visitor was 
not a gentleman, though near being one. lie was ill 
dressed in a light badly made suit, which hung loosely 
upon him, and yet became him. A crimson scarf was 
fastened carelessly about his neck by a flashing pin, and 
that also well became his dark and handsome features. 
His strong hands were brown and large, but well formed. 
He used his straw hat to emphasize what he said. He 
was full-grown, but so young that his face was smooth, 
save for the slight indication of a mustache. “He is 
quite honest,” the dean thought. 

“I come from America,” he began, abruptly, in a mel- 
low and powerful voice. 

“ You come from a country of which a man may be 
proud,” replied the dean, in the tone which made men 
love him; “ and you kindly honor me with a visit? ” 

“In plain words, sir, what do I want?” broke in the 
youth. “ I want to be a gentleman.” 

“ A most laudable ambition,” returned the other, 
smiling. 

“ I want to go to Oxford or Cambridge. Cambridge I 
would prefer, because you were there.” 

He acknowledged this compliment with a slight bow. 

“My father was a gentleman,” continued the lad, 
in his jerky and headlong fashion; “ but my mother was 
not.” 

“A man's mother,” returned the dean, in his plaintive 
voice, “ is more usually a lady.” 

“ Oh, you are laughing at me! But I am English- 
born, and was brought up a British subject in the 
Dominion. My name,” he continued, with some agita- 
tion, “ is Benjamin Lee.” 

He looked earnestly on the face in the shadowed corner, 
but he did not see the sudden and quickly subdued 


298 


THE SILEJSCE OF DEAN MAITLAED. 


quiver in the dean’s lip. He was aware, however, that a 
change had taken place in his face and demeanor. 

“ A very good name,” he returned, in the same dulcet 
tones; “ a very usual English name.” 

“ I was born at Malbourne,” the young man went on, 
with an increased sonorousness of voice and intensity of 
gaze. “ My mother’s name was Alma Lee.” 

“ Indeed. I remember your mother well. Is she liv- 
ing still? ” 

“She is, and I bring a letter from her. But that is 
not what I want to say. My mother was a deeply 
wronged woman, and she never complained. The busi- 
ness, Dean Maitland, is just this: My father has done 
nothing for me; all has fallen upon my mother. She 
has had me well educated for her means, and wanted me 
to go into business. But I am ambitious; I wish to 
make a figure in the world — to be, as I said, a gentleman, 
for I feel the good blood in my veins, and 1 am deter- 
mined to have my right, and to claim from my father 
what he is well able to give me — a university education 
and a start in life.” 

“ Indeed! ” said the dean, in an icy tone. 

“ And therefore,” proceeded the youth, springing to 
his feet the more to emphasize his words, “I come to 
you, because I am your son! ” 

The word “ son ” he delivered as if dealing a blow, and 
he evidently expected his hearer to recoil beneath this 
tremendous assertion; but he was disappointed. 

The dean’s fine-cut features indeed grew pale in the 
dusk, and there was a sudden deepening of tint in his 
eyes; his lips also met with a stern compression. But of 
this the young man saw nothing, and no other sign of 
emotion betrayed the tumult that raged so madly within 
him at the sound of that deadly monosyllable. 

“ Calm yourself, my friend; pray be seated again,” he 
said, in cool and silvery tones. “Since when, may I 
ask, have you suffered from this distressing delusion?” 

It was now the younger man’s turn to be aghast. The 
coolness with which this startling assertion was received 
utterly confounded him, and he dropped, with a vacuous 
stare, into his seat, muttering some queer Yankee ob- 
jurgation. 

“ Delusion! ” he ejaculated at length. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


299 


“It is a very usual form of mental disease to imagine 
one's self the son of some eminent person/' observed the 
dean, in the indifferent tone of one uttering a mild plati- 
tude. “Are you at present under medical treatment?" 

“No, sir ," returned the lad, regaining his mental 
poise; “I am as sound in mind and body as a man can 
possibly be; and I know myself to be your son, and I am 
here to claim my rights as such." 

“ The facts of your birth are well known in Mal- 
bourne," continued the dean, in the same indifferent 
tone. “ They are such as reverence for parents — a virtue, 
I fear, not inculcated in your adopted country — should 
lead you to conceal, and, if possible, forget. I remember 
the circumstances fully. I baptized you myself — that is, 
if you are the person you claim to be." 

“ I am not surprised that you should disown me before 
the world," said the youth; “and I own that it is impos- 
sible to speak upon the subject without some irreverence 
unbecoming a son; but I bid you ask your conscience, sir, 
whose fault it is that I cannot refer to my birth without 
imputing blame to my parents? I bid you further ask 
your conscience how you are to answer at the bar of 
Divine Justice, if you add to the sin which brought me 
into the world, a fatherless outcast, with the instincts of 
a higher rank warring with the barren necessities of his 
life, the further sin of neglecting the responsibilities you 
rashly incurred. Oh, I have no legal rights — that I know 
well; but have I no natural rights— I who have the blood 
of an ancient family in my veins, the instincts of a long 
line of gentlemen? Have I no rights in the sight of Him 
whose eternal laws were broken by the sin which gave rise 
to my being, and of which I was entirely innocent ? " 

It was a strange reversal of parts, the son admonishing 
the father, the layman rebuking the priest, the supposed 
penitent accusing the confessor; but the youth's fiery 
words struck home, and the dean quivered visibly beneath 
them, and for the moment he could summon no reply to 
his ashen lips. 

a I am sorry to be obliged to distress you, sir," con- 
tinued the young man, with some compunction, “but you 
will see on reflection that I ask nothing unreasonable. I 
merely ask you to repair the wrong of my birth — or rather, 
to fulfil the obligations incumbent on a parent. I have 


300 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


grown to manhood with no aid or recognition from you. 
I am alone in the world; for my mother has a mortal dis- 
ease, and has come home only to die. I only ask for 
this start in life, which you must be well able to give; I 
ask no further recognition. Believe me, sir, the time 
may come, when you will he glad to have some claim on 
the duty, if not the affection, of a son, and I am not un- 
grateful." 

The dean rose to his feet, quivering. “Silence!" he 
cried, in deep tones of compelling intensity. “ I cannot 
bear this," he added, in a voice of anguish, which escaped 
him against his will. “ This is intolerable, to be insulted 
in one's own house! Go, sir, and remember that in this 
country conduct so outrageous as yours is likely to lead 
you to imprisonment in a lunatic asylum." 

Now that he was standing he seemed to be gradually re- 
gaining the mastery of himself, which for the moment he 
had lost. Young Lee rose, but did not withdraw. 

“ I go," he replied. “ I have said enough for the 
present, but you will hear of me again until I gain my 
will. In the mean time, here is the letter my mother bid 
me deliver into your own hands, and which needs an 
answer." 

The dean took the letter with an inward shudder at 
the sight of it, and brought out some glasses, which he 
affected to wipe and arrange before reading it, though in 
reality he needed no glasses; he only wanted to gain time 
and composure. 

“By the way, Mr. Lee," he observed, quietly, “your 
mother married, I believe, some groom before leaving Eng- 
land. Is he living? " 

“She married Charles Judkins, who was a kind step- 
father to me. He died some years ago, leaving my mother 
and myself well provided for." 

“Your mother, then, has no other children?" 

“ None, sir." 

The dean had at last arranged the glasses and unfolded 
the letter, giving one swift glance at his visitor, who had 
walked up to one of the engravings, a sweet and guileless 
Madonna with a thoughtful child, and was examining it 
with interest. Nevertheless, the dean shaded his face 
from the light as he read. 

The room was very still, and pleasant sounds stole in 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 301 

through the open lattice. A great bee was humming 
about the roses and honeysuckle just outside; a blackbird 
woke up from his afternoon drowse and began fluting his 
liquid vespers; the cathedral clock proclaimed the hour 
in deep booming notes, and all the bells in the city 
echoed it with varying cadence; young voices came 
through the sunny air of the garden, and the stranger 
saw a party playing at tennis below; a girl's clear laugh 
rang out in true heart-music, and was followed by a 
man's. It was Marion laughing at some absurd mistake 
on the part of the love-blinded Lord Arthur, who was 
ready to laugh with her. The dean meanwhile read on 
in silence. 

The young man grew impatient, and longed to soothe 
his soul by a hearty whistle, to which his full red lips 
rounded themselves. He got to the end of the engrav- 
ings, and turned once more to the figure at the table; but 
the dean was still reading, statue-like, with his face acci- 
dentally shaded by his hand, though he never turned a 
page of the brief letter of one sheet. The picture he 
made sitting thus beneath the lattice, through which 
some long gold bars of sunshine were now stealing, 
remained npon the young man's memory forever, though 
he did not hear the quick subdued breathing of the 
reader, or see the chill drops upon his tortured brow. 

Within a stone's throw of that lattice one of the can- 
ons was standing on a short ladder, tending a peach-tree 
on his garden wall, thus seeking a pleasant distraction 
from the abstruse Hebrew studies in which he had been 
buried all the day. His wife stood in the pathway by the 
sunny border, where the bees were humming luxuriously 
over their luscious thieving, and looked on at his labors. 

“ I had it from the dean myself, Edmund," she was 
saying, “ this very afternoon." 

“ Well, my dear," he replied, rather indistinctly on 
account of the strips of cloth he held in his mouth, “you 
will now have the satisfaction of repeating it all over the 
close. Bishop of Warham, eh ? Maitland is a lucky 
fellow, and about as ignorant as that cat " — pointing to a 
fine grimalkin, who was lazily watching his master. 
“ But scholarship goes for nothing in these radical days." 

“ I am sure he will make a delightful bishop," said the 
lady; and who knows what old fogy we may get at the 


302 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


deanery now ? Some old trump, with his nose buried in 
a book all day, perhaps.” 

“ When not perched on a ladder,” laughed the canon. 
“ Well, who wouldn’t have the gift of the gab like Mait- 
land ? Lucky fellow, to be sure ! ” 

The letter which took so long to read ran as follows : 

“ I am come home to die, and I wish to see you once 
more first. I promised never to betray you, and swore 
away an innocent man’s character to shield j^ou, and I 
have never had a happy hour since. I cannot undo all 
the wrong I have done for your sake, but I can and must 
clear this man, who never did me harm. I cannot die in 
peace till I have righted him. Can I do it without hurt- 
ing you ? Come to me for Heaven’s sake : my days are 
numbered. My son bears this. He knows his parentage, 
but nothing more. He is a good lad. 

“Alma Judkins.” 

At last the dean lifted his head and questioned the 
youth with regard to his mother’s illness and present 
abode, and learned in reply that she was suffering from 
some fatal internal malady, which had become suddenly 
worse in consequence of a fall in the Belminster street, 
and that she had been admitted to the paying ward of 
the .local hospital, whence there was no probability of her 
issuing alive. 

“ You take your mother’s extremity easily, young 
man,” said the dean. 

But the youth replied that he had been expecting the 
end for so long that it no longer agitated him, yet his 
eyes filled with tears as he spoke. The dean then took a 
pen and slowly indited a few sentences, which he gave to 
the young man, who took the paper and withdrew with a 
bow, which his host very frigidly returned. 

No sooner had the door closed upon the young fellow’s 
stalwart form than Cyril dropped into his chair, and, 
burying his face in his hands, groaned heavily, shuddering 
from head to foot. If he could have dreamed this terri- 
ble moment twenty years ago, would that handsome strip- 
ling ever have seen the light? If any man could be 
brought face to face with the embodied result of one sin, 
would he ever sin more ? Probably he would, else why 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 303 

lias Eternal Wisdom reserved such knowledge for the 
most part to another world ? 

A light, swift step sounded along the corridor; the 
door opened, and the blind boy came running in, with a 
joyous greeting on his lips. 

The dean lifted his head, and strove to calm himself as 
he welcomed the child in a gentle voice; but his heart 
was wrung by the contrast between this lad and the fine, 
healthy youth who had just left him — wrung, too, by the 
thought that the latter’s look had shown no gleam of 
affection; nothing but a challenge of defiance. 

“I made such a mistake, papa,” said Everard; “I 
actually took a stranger for you. Yet his voice was 
louder and his step stronger than yours. I met him in 
the hall now. Benson was letting him out. Who was 
he? Benson says his face is rather like yours, so perhaps 
I was not so very stupid.” 

“ My poor Everard!” murmured the dean, folding 
the child with unwonted tenderness in his arms; “ my 
blighted boy! ” 

“ I am not poor,” returned the child, brightly, while 
he laid his round soft cheek on his father’s hollow face 
with a colt-like caress. “ Now, dada, I won’t be pitied. 
Benson said the fellow was like you, so his eyes were 
little better than my ears. But who was he?” 

“ A stranger, an American. So you sang the solo, I 
hear?” 

“ Yes: and it went so well. My voice was like a bird 
flying up to heaven’s gate. Father, it is nice to have 
such a voice; it goes as if it couldn’t help it. And I 
showed such a nice fellow over the cathedral, and took 
him in thoroughly.” 

“ Poor lad; poor dear lad! And what is going on 
now?” 

“ Virgil with the Herr. And after dinner Marry has 
promised to accompany our violins. And what do you 
think? The duke has a Stradivarius, and Lord Arthur is 
to take me to Dewhurst to hear it, aad perhaps touch it. 
How hot and wet your forehead is! Is your head bad? 
Am I bothering? ” 

The boy’s sightless gaze met his father’s glance of 
passionate tenderness, all unconscious of the agony it 
looked upon; and the dean turned away, for he could not 


»04 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


bear it. Marion’s laugh came floating in again with its 
masculine echo, and the child’s face brightened. 

“ Marry and Arthur/’ he said. 

The dean pushed the dark hair from the boy’s brow, 
kissed and blessed him, and dismissed him under the plea 
of a headache and desire for quiet, watching him leave 
the room with a look of wistful compassion. He loved 
his blind son better than anything on earth, but he re- 
membered how he had held the other lad in his arms at 
the font, and how the infant’s touch had stirred the first 
keen thrill of fatherhood in his heart. 

“ I dare not, oh, I dare not! It would be utter ruin! ” 
he murmured to himself, in reply to some inward sugges- 
tion. 

The young Canadian meantime left the deanery, and, 
placing his hat firmly on his head, turned to take one 
comprehensive look at it before he went round by the 
cloisters and disappeared. 

“ Je-n^salem! ” he exclaimed, “ if my sainted parent 
isn’t a first-rate actor .and a cool hand! Now I know 
where I got my brains from.” 

The dean sat on, with his head buried in his hands and 
his heart torn, with the deadly missive before him, and 
utter ruin staring him in the face, while the long gold 
bars of sunshine lengthened and fell across him unheeded, 
and the pleasant chime-music told quarter after quarter. 

“Oh, my God!” he groaned, “ but one sin in a youth 
so spotless! And have I not repented? And are all these 
years of agony nothing? And the work I have done and 
have still to do! And the powers vouchsafed to me! Is 
there no mercy — none?” 

An hour ago he had. been so secure, so unsuspecting — 
the old ghost laid forever, he thought. And now? To 
go to that public hospital, he, to whom no disguise was 
possible, whose very fame would pursue him and point 
him out with a finger of fire, to meet the dying gaze of 
that hated woman, to hear her terrible reproach! How 
could he? And that boy, with his strong self-will and 
his ambition — Dean Maitland knew too well whence he 
got those qualities — he would hunt him down without 
pity. Why not cut the knot forever? He had poison at 
hand. 

The low mellow murmurs of a gong rose on his ear 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLANB. 


305 


(there were no bells or any harsh sounds at the Deanery); 
he heard Marion's voice calling to Everard, and the tap 
of her light foot as she ran down-stairs only just in time 
for dinner. He could not take his life just then; he had 
to invent an excuse for not appearing at dinner. 

The perilous moment past, better thoughts came to 
him. He leaned out of the window and breathed the 
cool dusk air. A wakened bird twittered happily before 
turning again to its rest; Everard's pure voice floated out 
from an open window, with the words of an anthem he 
was learning. The dean fell down before the crucifix, 
and tried to pray. He lay there in the darkness while his 
children's music sounded through the open windows, till 
the moonlight stole in through the lattice upon him, and 
there was silence in the house, save for the ticking of 
clocks and the deep breathing of sleepers. Then he arose, 
haggard and exhausted, but resolved to do his duty, 
whatever it might cost him. 

Striking a light, he went to a cabinet inlaid with deli- 
cate mosaic and touched a spring. A hidden compart- 
ment was disclosed, whence he took a bottle and a glass 
on which measures were engraved. Carefully pouring 
out an exact quantity of dark-brown liquid, he drank 
it, and replaced the spring. 

The dean was a total abstainer; he knew the world too 
well to hope for influence over the popular mind unless 
he bowed to the idol of the hour, and frequently observed 
to friends that he abstained from wine “for the sake of 
example." For the same reason, probably, nobody knew 
anything about the little bottle of dark liquid. 


CHAPTER III. 

Whejst Everard reached the High Street, his attention 
was caught by an announcement in a bookseller's window, 
“Dean Maitland's new work,” and, on going up to the 
shop, he saw the volumes, fresh from the publisher's, in 
their plain brown binding. It was the third volume of 
the dean's “ Commentary on the Pauline Epistles.'* 
There also he saw, in every variety of binding suited to lux 
20 


306 THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 

urious devotion, his other works: his 44 Secret Penitent/'’ 
his 44 Knight's Expiation, and other Poems/’ his 44 Lyra 
Sacra/’ his 44 Individual Sanctity,” his 44 Verses for the 
Suffering,” 44 Parish Sermons,” 44 Sermons preached in 
Westminster Abbey,” together with endless tracts and 
pamphlets. Everard purchased the 44 Secret Penitent,” 
and the 44 Expiation,” after turning over the leaves of 
the sermons, wondering at their commonplace character, 
and listening to a long eulogy on the author from the 
bookseller. Then he walked up the hill to the station, 
dipping into his new purchases as he went. 

Having claimed his modest possessions, he had them 
conveyed to the George Inn, where he dined in a first- 
floor room with a bow-window looking out on the sunny, 
bustling High Street; and while he dined he turned over 
the leaves of the dean’s book, recognizing Cyril’s style 
and certain peculiar turns of thought and traits of char- 
acter as he read, and feeling more and more that neither 
the poems nor the devotions were the work of a conscious 
hypocrite. From an artistic point of view, they were not 
calculated to take the world by storm; but there was an 
unmistakable* ring of reality throughout, which entitled 
them to respect, and accounted for the influence Dean 
Maitland was said to exercise over men’s minds. The 
44 Secret Penitent” had passed through many editions. 
It must have comforted the souls of thousands of human 
beings; it could only have been written by a man of deep 
religious convictions and high-toned morality. 

Everard sat in the bow-window, listening to the hum of 
the streets and the cadences of the bells, and pondering 
with a bewildered mind over this enigma of human char- 
acter; and again he wondered, as he had so often won- 
dered during the earlier days of miserable brooding in his 
captivity, how it was possible that such a man could have 
sinned so heavily? He recalled his sensitive refinement, 
his excessive exaltation of the spiritual above the animal, 
his scorn for the facile follies of youth, his piety, the 
purity of his emotions, his almost womanly tenderness, 
and marvelled with a bewildered amazement. He had 
himself not been unacquainted with the fires of tempta- 
tion, but his life had been unscathed, nevertheless, 
because he had been strong enough to resist. But that 
such fires should have power over Cyril seemed incredible, 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


307 


especially when he remembered his austere, almost ascetic 
life. 

Equally strange did it appear to Cyril himself, as he 
lay prostrate before the crucifix, face to face with his sin, 
and wondering if indeed he were the same man as he who 
went astray twenty years ago. 

Yet the first sin was simple enough, giving the compo- 
nents of Cyril's character and Alma's, the strange and 
inexplicable entanglement of the animal and the spirit- 
ual in human nature, and the blind madness in which 
passion, once kindled, involves the whole being. 

Alma was then innocent of heart; but what is inno- 
cence before the fierce flame of temptation, unless 
guarded by high principle and severe self-mastery? Cyril 
could not live without adoration, and when Marion 
turned from him, he caught at that unconsciously offered 
him elsewhere, telling himself that there could be no 
harm to such as he, above temptation as he was, in 
watching the impassioned light of Alma's beautiful eyes, 
and that pity required him to pour some kindness into so 
stricken and guileless a heart. 

So in those idle days of the Shotover curacy he trod 
the primrose path of dalliance with a careless and 
unguarded heart, and did not waken to a sense of danger 
until he found himself and another precipitated down- 
ward into the very gulfs of hell. The shock of the fall 
sobered him, and suddenly quenched the delirium of the 
senses which had hitherto blinded him, and left a 
mingled loathing and contempt in its place; and the 
abasement of his own fall and the terrible sense of having 
wrought the ruin of another stirred the yet unwakened 
depths of his nature, and kindled the first faint begin- 
nings of deeper moral and spiritual life. Had he but 
possessed the courage and strength of will to accept the 
consequences, to confess where confession was due, and 
to atone as far as atonement was possible, both he and 
the more innocent partner of his guilt might have recov- 
ered moral health, and even happiness, and he might 
have led the noblest if not perhaps the happiest of lives, 
deriving strength from his very weakness. 

For his life had till then been untempted, and all his 
impulses had been good and beautiful. But he was a 
coward, and loved the praise of men. And more than all 


308 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


things and persons he loved Cyril Maitland. He was 
also a self-deceiver; he drugged his conscience, and was 
dragged into the tortuous windings of his own inward 
deceit; and thus he fell from depth to depth, like Luci- 
fer, falling all the deeper because of the height from 
which he fell, until he finished in the perversion of his 
moral being with the deed of a Judas. Of that last 
iniquity he never dared think. 

Everard read and pondered, and pondered and read, 
and was filled with awe and pity. Then, laying the books 
aside with a sense of joy in his newly gained freedom, he 
took his hat and sauntered along the dusk, yet unlighted 
streets, letting his fancy dwell on brighter themes. 

He had not gone far before he met a man who looked 
curiously at him, turned after he had passed, and again 
studied him intently, and finally, retracing his steps, 
accosted him. 

“It is Doctor Everard, surely?” he said. 

“That is my name,” replied Everard, a little startled 
at the unfamiliar sound of the long unspoken name. 
“ But I have not the pleasure of knowing yours,” he 
added, scanning the figure and face of the respectable 
tradesman. 

“Think of Dartmoor, and No. 56,” replied the trades- 
man, in a low tone. 

A light of recognition broke over Everard’s face, and he 
clasped the offered hand with a cordial greeting. 

“ It is no wonder that you did not recognize me,” the 
man said; “thanks to you, I make rather a different 
figure to what I did on the moor. But yours is a face not 
to be forgotten.” 

“ You are doing well, apparently, Smithson.” 

“ I have a linen-draper’s shop, and I married a good 
girl, and we have two little ones, and we pay our way,” 
he replied. “ If you are goijig my way — I was just stroll- 
ing up the hill for a breath of air — I will tell you all 
about it. You know, doctor, I could never have had the 
courage to face the world again but for you. Your words 
were always in my ears, ‘ The only atonement we can 
make is to accept the consequences manfully and conquer 
them.’ It was uphill work, and I was often ready to 
throw up the sponge; but I stuck to it, and got through. 
Everybody knows my story, but they have mostly forgot- 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


309 


ten it. Many a time when I was ready to give up, and 
take to lying ways and hiding and going to the deuce 
again, I remembered how you, an honorable gentleman, 
who never did wrong, trusted and respected me in spite 
of all, and I thought, f If he can respect me, others will/ 
and I held on. You remember the Putney Slogger? ” 

“Poor Slogger! he had a good heart, Jim.” 

“ He goes straight now, and says it was you that 
heartened him to it. Has a green-grocer's cart, and 
deals fair.” 

Smithson had been a clerk in a mercantile office, and, 
falling into dissipated ways and consequent debt, helped 
himself to petty sums, which gradually grew larger, until 
the usual end of such a course was reached — an appear- 
ance in the prisoner's dock and a sentence of penal 
servitude. He was barely twenty when Everard made his 
acquaintance at Dartmoor, and a more hopeless human 
being than he did not exist. He had been brought up 
by an uncle, who now washed his hands of him forever. 
Everard pitied the miserable lad, won his affections and 
confidence, showed him how he could shorten his term by 
good conduct, impressed upon him that one fault need 
not blight a man's life, and encouraged him to achieve a 
new reputation. 

When he got his ticket-of-leave, he boldly offered his 
services in shops and offices at a low price, in considera- 
tion of his antecedents, and, after many rebuffs and 
much privation during a time when he kept himself 
alive by casual manual labor, by dint of persistence and 
watching the time when employers were short-handed, 
he got himself taken on as assistant in a draper's shop, 
for which he had done errands and odd jobs. 

Here he suffered much misery from the taunts and 
practical jokes of his fellow-shopmen, who managed to 
get hold of his history, the truth of which he did not 
deny. Did any petty dishonesty occur, suspicion turned 
at once to the jail-bird; nay, was anything lost it was laid 
to his account. More than once he was on the point of 
being taken into custody, when his innocence was proved; 
and once the roasting and sending to Coventry he under- 
went at the hands of his comrades had become so intol- 
erable that, in his desperation, he offered to fight each 
man separately, in order of seniority, on the condition 


310 THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 

that the conquered were never again to allude to his 
unfortunate past. His challenge was refused on the 
ground that no man could sully his hands by fighting 
him, but one or two of the better disposed from that day 
dropped the cruel tyranny; others followed their exam- 
ple, and Smithson gradually earned a character and 
received full salary. 

Then he saved money, and, having gained the affec- 
tion of a girl in the millinery department of his house, 
felt that he had won the battle of life. They put then- 
savings together and started in an humble way on their 
own account, and now they had a large establishment, 
and paid their way. They did not, of course, parade 
Smithson’s antecedents; but they were determined to 
have no concealments, and intended that their children, 
when of fit age, should know the whole story. Smithson 
now related to Everard how, mindful of his own desper- 
ate struggles and misery on leaving prison, he tried to 
lend others a helping hand, by giving them employment, 
ft was, however, found extremely difficult to mix them 
with people of good reputation. The end of it was that 
his entire staff, both of house and shop, consisted of 
criminals, all of whom were supposed to ignore the ante- 
cedents of the others, and many of whom believed the 
others to be spotless. Many, whom he was unable to 
employ himself, Smithson had set going by offering 
security for their integrity, and by this means had had 
the happiness of setting a number of fallen creatures 
upon their feet again. 

“ But are you never deceived or robbed? ” asked Ever- 
ard, who was deeply interested in his friend’s narration. 

Smithson smiled, and replied that his trust had more 
than once been abused, but more frequently justified. 
That very week he had paid a hundred pounds surety 
money. 

“ You will not make a fortune at this rate, Jim.” 

“No, doctor; but we are content to pay our way, and 
we like helping people better than getting money,” he 
replied. “ My wife is greatly set on that, especially on 
helping the women. Come and see her; she has heard 
many a tale of you. It will be supper-time by the time 
we are back.” 

Everard gladly accepted this invitation, and found 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 3H 

among Smithson’s staff another old prison friend, whose 
memory of him was as grateful as his employer’s. Smith- 
son showed him the photograph of a refined looking 
woman, with a pleasing face. “ Our forewoman,” he said. 

“ But surely there is nothing against her,” said Ever- 
ard. 

She had ten years for killing her husband,” replied 
Smithson. 

“ Capital woman of business, and the sweetest temper. 
The dean got hold of her, and sent her to me. He stands 
surety for those who have no character. Ah! no one 
knows the good that man does! ” 

“Do you mean the Dean of Belminster?” asked Ever- 
ard, in a hard voice. 

“ Of course; the dean — Dean Maitland.” 

Everard again looked at the handsome milliner, whose 
face was as gentle as it was refined, and could not help 
asking what led this amiable person to resort to the ex- 
treme measure of murdering her husband. No doubt he 
deserved it, he thought; but then, so many husbands do, 
that it would cause considerable social inconvenience to 
condone such acts. 

“ She did it in a passion, poor girl. The fellow was a 
drunken brute, years older than she, and he used to heat 
her and drag her about by the hair night after night. 
She put up with it, as so many poor things do, and went 
starved and barefoot, though they were well-to-do people. 
But one night he came home drunk as usual, and dashed 
the baby against the wall, and she took up a knife and 
stabbed him to death. 

“ And the baby? ” 

“ The baby is now in Earlswood, a hopeless idiot. She 
hopes to have it home to tend some day. It was a clever 
little thing, just beginning to talk. Nobody but the dean 
and we two guess there is anything wrong in her past. 
She is only four-and-thirty now, and much admired. 
My wife is very fond of her.” 

“ Have you any more murderers?” asked Everard. 

“ Not at present. We are mostly thieves and forgers 
just now, and all first convictions. Ah, doctor! the 
Almighty can bring good out of evil, and it was a happy 
day for many besides me when first I saw your kind face 
in that awful place. Nobody but you ever told me that 


312 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


good is stronger than evil. You said it in the exercise- 
yard that cold, foggy Sunday, while all that vicious talk 
was going on round us, and the Mauler was making his 
filthy jokes . ” 

“That is all over now, Jim, thank God!” said 
Everard. 

Then the former comrades parted, Everard deeply 
moved by what he had seen and heard, and half doubting 
if the pleasant, open face of the philanthropic linen- 
draper, with its look of grave thought and settled happi- 
ness, could indeed be the same as that white, haggard, 
abject face with the despairing eyes which had so moved 
his pity years ago in the dreary prison, and thankful for 
his long agony if it had been the salvation of but one fel- 
low-creature. 

The next evening found him in the nave of the cathe- 
dral some time before the appointed hour for the lecture, 
for the verger had warned him that the attendance would 
be very large. The sun was still shining warmly on the 
lime-tree avenue outside, making the fresh foliage glow 
like a jewel of unearthly radiance in its blended gold and 
green translucence, throwing long powdery shafts of gold 
through the windows up into the dim recesses of the 
groined roof, and disclosing carved nooks only thus 
touched by the midsummer glory, and dark all the year 
long besides. But the body of the cathedral was solemnly 
dusk, and great masses of shadow brooded in the choirs, 
transepts and chantries, and each brotherhood of massed 
pillars in the nave was bound with a girdle of tiny fire- 
points, which were to grow larger with the gathering 
gloom. 

Everard watched the great stream of worshippers pour 
steadily and quietly in and fill the long lines of chairs, 
which made the pillars look more lofty and the soaring 
roof farther off than ever. They were chiefly men, the 
lectures being especially given for workingmen; but 
women were not excluded, and in some cases accompanied 
a husband, a father, or a brother. Men with hard and 
stained hands, with clothes still redolent of the putty, 
paint or oil of the day’s labors; men with rugged, eager 
faces and athletic frames, for the most part; also the 
pallid, weak-kneed tailors, shoemakers and other indoor 
laborers. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


313 


Clerks and shopmen were also there, with men of a higher 
standing still; but it was the hard-handed fellows in whom 
Everard found himself most interested — those extremely 
human creatures in whom the elementary instincts and 
passions are still so active and unchecked, and whose 
intellects are so starved and yet so unspoiled. How would 
the refined and cultivated dean touch these? he wondered. 
He had lived among them so long himself that he had 
acquired a strong affection for the raw material of human 
nature; but what link was there between the delicate- 
handed Cyril and these untutored sons of impulse? A 
link there surely must be, or they would not thus come 
pouring in to hear him. 

Far down among the hard visages of the artisans, Ever- 
ard saw some black-coated, clerical-looking men, whose 
peculiar half-finished appearance proclaimed them to be 
dissenting ministers, and he remembered how the verger 
told him that the popular Spurgeon himself did not dis- 
dain to try to catch the secret of the dean's golden- 
mouthed eloquence. 

Such an agitation pervaded his being, that even the 
quiet majesty of the great dim cathedral could scarcely 
calm him. He could now count the hours before his 
meeting with Lilian, and another second might bring 
him face to face with Cyril, whom he had last seen in 
the terrible moment of his sentence. It seemed as if the 
service would never begin. The worshippers still poured 
in, the nave was full; but where were the clergy? The 
organ had been sounding for some time — soft, mellow 
music, as soothing as the wave-lullaby of the summer 
sea, with no hint of slumbering tempests, — and a sick 
fancy took Everard's shaken mind that something was 
wrong, and Cyril would never come. 

He seemed to have been looking at that dark sea of 
earnest faces, and hearing that solemn, wave-like music 
forever, in the beam-broken dusk of the vast building. 
But at last a melody rose slowly, like an ocean spirit, out 
of the softly breaking waves of music, and floated away 
over its surface; it was Mendelssohn's, “ If with all your 
hearts ye truly seek me)" — the same which Cyril had 
listened to in the hour of his desperate inward conflict 
eighteen years ago, and the small choir entered with two 
clergymen, one of whom wore the scarlet hood of a doc- 


314 


THE SILENCE OF LEAN MAITLAND . 


tor over his snowy surplice, and whom he heard it whis- 
pered was no other than the great dean. 

He had so stationed himself, partly with a view to being 
unseen oy the preacher, that he only caught a brief 
glimpse of the procession, and lost sight of the dean 
entirely when the latter took the place he occupied dur- 
ing the prayers, so that he could not recognize him. 

Cyril had risen that morning refreshed by sleep, and 
had looked upon the disturbing events of the previous 
evening from quite another point of view. In the even- 
ing, alone in the silence of his study, he had been a sinful 
man, face to face with the awful consequences of his 
guilt, prostrate before the God whose laws he had broken, 
and whose priesthood he had dishonored. In the sunny 
morning, at the breakfast-table, surrounded by an ador- 
ing family, with servants attentive to his will, with a pile 
of correspondence before him — correspondence in which 
the Dean of Belminster was asked to do this and that, 
and implored to give advice or attendance on the other; 
correspondence relating to the Bishopric of Warham, 
which was now virtually his own — he was another man: 
he was the Dean of Belminster, the Bishop-designate of 
Warham, the friend of princes and ministers, the popu- 
lar author, the chosen guide of troubled consciences. 
This man naturally thought in other ways than the con- 
science-stricken sinner alone with his guilt. 

While breakfasting and chatting pleasantly with his 
children, and with Miss Mackenzie and the German tutor, 
both of whom were under the spell of his fascination, an 
under-current of thought passed through his mind on the 
subject of last night's unsuspected agony. While rapidly 
running through his correspondence, and answering let- 
ter after letter with the swift skill of a practised pen; 
while entering the cathedral behind the white-robed 
choir; while listening to the chanted prayers and psalms; 
while sending his beautiful voice pealing down the dim 
aisles on the wings of the ancient Hebrew poems; the 
same under-current of thought flowed silently on. 

Was it his fault that a series of blunders had con- 
demned Everard to an excessive sentence for a crime that 
was never committed? Was he responsible for the sever- 
ity of the judge, the stupidity of the jury, the unlucky 
blunderings of the witnesses — above all, for the perjury 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


315 


of Alma Lee? A man may love a woman who has sinned, 
but few men love women who sin for their sake, even 
though that sin be of their own compassing. Cyril had 
turned from Alma after her first fall; but when she stood 
and swore to the undoing of Everard, he loathed her with 
an unspeakable loathing. He said to himself that she 
was thoroughly bad, the cause of every trouble he had 
ever known; as the sons of Adam always do when they 
sin, he threw all the blame on the woman. 

He argued within himself that it was now too late for 
reparation; by this time Everard must have nearly com- 
pleted his term of imprisonment. His life had been 
hopelessly ruined; to stir the muddy waters of that bitter 
past would be merely to bring irretrievable ruin on others. 
Alma could not, he thought, clear Everard without be- 
traying him. 

And then he considered his position in the Church, his 
elevation in men’s minds, the influence he had upon his 
generation — an influence depending entirely on moral 
spotlessness, and asked what sin could equal that of 
ruining his own career of exceptional usefulness ? To 
comfort the morbid terrors of a dying reprobate was he to 
bring disgrace upon the national Church, of which he 
was a chief ornament; nay, upon the very Christianity 
of which he had been so famous a teacher ? Was 
he to blast the prospects of his innocent children; to 
bring ruin on them, and disgrace upon his aged father 
and upon the honored name that even his base-born son 
revered ? The thing was monstrous; the more he looked 
at it the more monstrous it appeared. 

Then he remembered how cruel Fate had been to him, 
how good his intentions eYer were, how far he had been 
from dreaming one of the consequences which wrapped 
him round now in a net of such complicated meshing. 
As to Alma, it turned him sick to think of a sin which 
his inmost soul loathed; he must have been mad, pos- 
sessed, suffering from some supernatural assault of the 
powers of darkness — and he had repented, Heaven alone 
knew how bitterly. 

He thought of the fatal hour when he disguised him- 
self in his friend’s dress, with no thought but the desire 
of escaping recognition and dread of bringing scandal 
upon his cloth, never dreaming that he would be mis- 


316 THE SILENCE OF LEAN MAITLAND . 

taken for Everard, who was singularly unlike him in face 
and manner. He thought of the heavy stick he had 
taken, simply because a man likes to have something in 
his hand and which he had thrown away before the 
struggle; on Ben Lee's unexpected appearance; of his 
own wish to appease the anger of the man he had so 
cruelly wronged; of Lee's unbridled fury; of the violence 
of his assault upon him; and of the fatal blow which had 
been dealt with no ill intention, but was merely the 
rebound of that which Lee was dealing him. 

In all this he felt that he had been the sport of a cruel 
destiny, the fool of fortune. And had he not suffered 
enough to atone for more than men could ever impute to 
him. He thought of the wife of his youth, first 
estranged, and then fading before him; of the sweet 
faces of his children, and the graves which closed over 
them in their loveliest bloom, just as each had twined 
itself round his heart. He thought of his son and his 
hopeless affliction, and his heart bled. 

Yet he intended to go to the dying woman. But not 
immediately; he had pressing duties to perform first, and 
who knew what might turn up in the mean time? 
Besides, he needed time for thought before meeting 
her. 

In the afternoon there came a second message from the 
sick woman, bidding him come that day, as she might 
not live to see another. He could not come at the 
moment, having just then an engagement that could not 
be postponed; he promised, with a sick heart, to come in 
an hour's time. 

The hour passed. He took his hat and yet lingered, 
going back to give some message to Marion, then again 
to look into Everard's study and see how he was getting 
on; then at last he issued from beneath the light colon- 
nade before his door, and set his face toward the hos- 
pital. He had not left the close when a messenger from 
the hospital met him, and gave the dean a note, which he 
opened with trembling fingers. It was to inform him 
that Alma was dead. 

He turned swiftly back, and did not stop till he reached 
home, entered his study, and locked the door; then he 
threw himself into a chair, laid his arms on the table, 
and, letting his face fall upon them, burst into tears and 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


317 


sobbed heavily for some time. Something had turned 
up, after all, and he was spared the horror of that 
dreaded interview, and could only hope that Alma's 
secret had died with her. 

He did not leave his study until it was time to go to 
the cathedral, which he did with a sense of unspeakable 
relief. The reaction after last night's agony and to-day's 
conflict made him see everything in the brightest colors, 
and a delicious languor fell upon his wearied brain, a lan- 
guor so deep that he felt incapable of rousing himself to 
the effort of preaching. His was, however, one of those 
finely strung, nervous natures which respond to the will 
as a thoroughbred horse does to the whip, and do what 
is required of them in spite of exhaustion up to the last 
gasp; and when the brief prayers were ended, and the 
great volume of men's voices rolled out the hymn before 
the sermon, he pulled himself together and ascended the 
pulpit with his accustomed air of reverent dignity; and, 
having turned up the gas-beads at the desk and placed 
his manuscript conveniently, sent a piercing, comprehen- 
sive glance all round the vast building and over the 
wide sea of rough and earnest faces which flooded it, as 
if taking the measure of the human material spread out, 
plastic and receptive, before him. 

The sight inspired him, and sent a thrill through 
every fibre of his being; for his was one of those mag- 
netic natures whose strong attractive power over masses 
is in direct proportion to the stimulating power of 
masses upon themselves. He could not preach to empty 
benches, but when he found himself face to face with a 
multitude, he threw his own personality into it in such a 
manner that he became, as it were, a part of his audience 
and made it a part of himself, so that his own emotions 
thrilled his hearers, and theirs reacted upon him. This 
was one reason why the sermons Everard thought so 
commonplace when printed had such a living force when 
spoken. 

Everard, who was so placed by a cluster of pillars as to 
be half shielded by them, advanced his head and gazed 
over his hymn-book; so that he could see the preacher 
without much of his own face being seen, and his first 
glance at the face, islanded from the dusk in the ruddy 
glow of gas-light, told him that he must have recognized 


318 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


Cyril anywhere, and set his heart beating vehemently 
with a mixture of love and hate. 

At forty-three Dean Maitland was in his fullest prime; 
the years had ripened instead of wasting and crushing 
him, as they had Everard. The dark-brown hair waved 
as gracefully as in his youth over his broad, clear brow, 
while the few silver threads in it were unseen; the finely 
cut, closely shaven features were but little sharpened in 
outline; the light-blue eyes were more sunken, and they 
glowed with an intenser radiance. The old face was 
there, but the expression was altered; there was a hard 
austerity about the mouth when in repose that verged 
upon cruelty, though no one who had ever seen those fine 
lips curve into their winning smile when speaking could 
accuse them of anything harsher than a severe purity 
quite in character with the man’s writings and his calling, 
and during the most impassioned glances of the wonder- 
fully expressive eyes they had a certain gleam which sug- 
gested the quaint and quiet humor which made the dean 
so delightful in society. 

Yet over all the face and in ihe whole bearing Everard 
saw an expression he had never seen before, and which he 
could not analyze, but which struck him with keen pain, 
and called to his mind Milton’s description of the fallen 
seraph on whose faded cheek sate care. 

All that evening Everard’s mind was haunted by the 
image of the fallen angel, once the brightest of the sons 
of morning, weighted with his unutterable woe, and 
yearning for the lost glory that could never more be his. 

In the mean time, the closing notes of the hymn died 
away in the long and lingering cadences of the organ, the 
great congregation seated itself with a subdued rustle and 
murmur, and the dean, in his magnificent voice and pure 
enunciation, gave out his text. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


319 


CHAPTER IV. 

The voice which had been so full of music in Cyril 
Maitland's youth, had now become not only an instrument 
of great compass and rich tone, but it was played by an 
artist who was a perfect master of his craft. It was said 
of the Bishop of Belminster that he could pronounce the 
mystic word “ Mesopotamia " in such a manner as to 
affect his auditors to tears; but of the dean it might be 
averred that his pronunciation of “ Mesopotamia " caused 
the listeners' hearts to vibrate with every sorrow and 
every joy they had ever known, all in the brief space of 
time occupied by the utterance of that affecting word. 
Everard had heard this saying in Belminster, and knew 
well what Cyril's voice was of old, but he was quite un- 
prepared for the tremendous rush of emotion that over- 
whelmed him when the dean opened his clear-cut lips and 
said, with the pathos the words demanded, “ We took 
sweet counsel together, and walked in the house of Cod 
as friends." 

He then paused, as his custom was, to let the words 
sink deeply into his hearers' minds before he began his 
discourse, and Everard's very life seemed to pause with 
him, while he felt himself shaken in his innermost depths. 
Then he remembered that Cyril's passionate sermon upon 
innocence was the last he had heard from him. Since 
that he had heard only the discourses of prison chaplains 
to an accompaniment of whispered blasphemy and filth. 
Once more he saw the little church at Melbourne, the 
beautiful young priest offering the chalice to the kneeling 
people in the wintry sun-gleams; once more he saw the 
shadowy figure in the afternoon dusk, uttering his ago- 
nized appeals to the startled listeners below. 

tc Yes, my brothers," said the dean (he eschewed 
“ brethren," as both conventional and obsolete, and dwelt 
with a loving intonation on the word “brothers"), “Jesus 
Christ and Judas took sweet counsel together, and walked 
in the house of Cod, as friends, strange as it appears to 
us, difficult as it is to realize a fact so startling, since in 
all the whole range of the world's tragic history there 
has never been found a character so vile as the one or 
so spotless as the other. 


320 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


“ Yet they were not only friends, but they actually 
took sweet counsel together. Picture that to yourselves, 
dear brothers: Christ had pleasant conversations with 
Judas, asked his opinion on high and holy subjects, 
listened to his words, as you and I listen to the words of 
those dear and near to us. Was there ever a more 
strangely assorted pair? And yet” — the dean paused, 
and sent the penetrating radiance of his gaze sweeping 
over the mass of upturned faces before him — “it may be 
that even now, to-night, with these eyes of mine, I see 
among you, my brothers, in this very house of God, 
another pair strangely like that mentioned by David in 
his prophecy — some loyal follower of Christ taking sweet 
counsel and walking as a friend with such an one as 
Judas, money-loving, ambitious, false; musing even now, 
with the echoes of psalms and holy words in his ears, how 
he may betray the friend who trusts and loves him. 
Alas, my brothers, how often is such a companionship 
seen; and how often, how sadly often, is the guileless 
friend whose trust and love is betrayed, a woman! ‘Nay/ 
I hear you say, ‘ we have our faults, we don't pretend to 
be saints, but we are not Judases/ Dare you say that 
you are no Judas?” he added, in sharp, incisive tones, 
while his glance seemed to single some individual from 
the throng and to pierce to his very marrow — “you, 
who sold your wife's happiness and your children's bread 
for a pot of beer? or you? ” and here the penetrating gaze 
seemed to single out another, while the preacher launched 
at him another sharp denunciation of some homely, every- 
day vice, using the most direct and forcible words the 
language contains to give vigor to his censures, till the 
cold sweat stood upon rugged brows, some women wept 
furtively, and the dean's keen glance perceived the 
inward tremblings of many a self-convicted sinner. 

The preacher then observed that the popular concep- 
tion of Judas as a truculent thief whose ruffianly char- 
acter was ill-concealed by his thorough-paced hypocrisy 
was probably false, and pointed out that Judas must have 
appeared to the world in which he lived a highly respect- 
able and well-conducted person, if not a very saint. Nay, 
it was his own opinion that Judas was actually a very 
superior being, a man of lofty aspirations and pure life, 
a patriot — one who looked ardently for the promised 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. S21 

Messiah, and had sufficient faith to recognize him in the 
son of the Nazarene carpenter. Why, he asked his 
auditors, if he had not been all this, should he have 
joined that little band of obscure men, those peasants 
and fishers, those men of austere morality and lofty con- 
verse, who had left all to follow the young peasant 
prophet who had not even a roof to shelter Him? 

He drew a beautiful sketch of the sweet and simple 
brotherhood of disciples clustering about the Master, who 
seemed to have inspired them up to the moment of the 
crucifixion more with tender and passionate human devo- 
tion than with awe and worship, and with whom they 
lived in such close and intimate communion, taking 
sweet counsel together on the loftiest subjects, and yet 
sharing the most trivial events of everyday life ; and 
asked his hearers if they thought a mere money-lover 
and traitor could have endured such a fellowship, or 
been endured by it. But if Judas were indeed worthy to 
be chosen as one of that small and select band (and it was 
an undoubted fact that he was thought worthy and ten- 
derly loved up to the last by his Divine Master), how 
was it that he fell into so black a sin, and stamped his 
name upon all time as a symbol of the utmost degrada- 
tion of which man is capable? 

“Ah! my brothers,” said the dean, “ he was a hypo- 
crite, but so consummate a hypocrite that he deceived 
himself. He knew that he loved G-od and his Master and 
Friend, but he did not know, or would not know, that he 
loved Mammon — the riches of this world and its pomps 
and vanities, its fleeting honors and transient foam-flake 
of fame — better. The bag naturally fell to him because 
it had no attractions for the disciples whose hearts were 
set upon heavenly treasure only. The renown of the mir- 
acles he witnessed spread so that idlers flocked as to a show 
to see them; and this and the hope of the revival of the 
Jewish monarchy which filled the minds of all the dis- 
ciples till after Calvary, stimulated the man’s ambition, 
which he probably mistook for devout zeal till that ter- 
rible hour, when the contempt and hatred which fell 
upon his Teacher and Friend made him desert the fall- 
ing King in his disappointed ambition, and finally 
betray Him. 

“ I charge you, ipy brothers,” continued the dean, with 
21 


322 


TEE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


a passion that shook his audience, “ that you beware of 
self-deception. You may deceive others — yea, those who 
love you most dearly and live with you most intimately, 
who sit by your hearth and break bread at your table, 
through long, long years you may deceive them; and you 
may deceive yourselves — you may devote all to God, and 
yet keep back one darling sin, one cherished iniquity that 
is poisoning the very springs of your being, like the young 
man who made the great refusal, like Ananias and Sap- 
phira; but remember, you cannot deceive God !” — here 
the preacher paused and choked back a rising sob — “ all 
is open in His sight ” — here the dean trembled, and 
his voice took a tone of heart-broken anguish — There 
my brothers, up there is no shuffling/’ 

There was silence for some moments in the vast build- 
ing, broken only by the deep quick breathing of the 
hushed, attentive multitude, and the great secret of the 
dean’s power flashed swiftly upon Everard’s mind. It 
was the fact that the thoughts he was uttering were not 
his own; that he was possessed and carried away by some 
irresistible power, which forced him to speak what was 
perhaps pain and grief to him, what was utterly beyond 
his will. A strange power, truly, which made Ezekiel 
pronounce his own dire mischance, and predict the taking 
away the desire of his eyes for which he dared not mourn; 
which made Balaam bless when he tried to curse; and 
caused Isaiah to foretell in torrents of fiery eloquence 
things he desired in vain to look into — a great and awful 
gift when given in even the smallest measure, a gift 
called in olden times prophecy, in these genius. 

A deep awe and compassion fell upon Everard as he 
looked upon the agitated and inspired orator, whose soul 
was so deeply stained with guilt, and he thought of the 
disobedient prophet and of other sinful men, singled out, 
in spite of their frailty, for the supreme honor of being 
the instruments of the Divine Will. 

“ Watch against secret sin,” continued the preacher, 
in a low and earnest but distinct and audible voice. 
“ Pray for broken hearts, failure, misery, anything but 
the gratified ambition, the fulfilled heart’s desire which 
makes it impossible for you to renounce all and follow 
Christ.” Then he spoke of the remorse of Judas and his 
miserable end; said that even he would have found instant 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 323 

forgiveness had he sought or desired it. But he proba- 
bly did not think it would be given, since his own love 
was not large enough for such a forgiveness, and he thus 
shrank from the only possible healing for him. “My 
brothers,” he said, in a voice which touched the very core 
of Everard's heart, “ the man we think most meanly of is 
the man we have wronged.” 

He pointed out the difference between repentance and 
remorse; drew a vivid picture of the latter, which he 
said was the “ sorrow of sorrows and the worst torture 
of hell.” He said that nothing earthly could soothe that 
pain — not all the riches of the world; not the esteem of 
men; not the highest earthly renown; or the enjoyment 
of beauty, health, youth; not all the pleasures of sense or 
intellect; not the sweetest and purest treasures of human 
affection; and the voice in which he said this was so 
exquisitely, so despairingly sad, that a wave of [intensest 
pity rushed over Everard's soul, and a great sob rose in 
his throat, and he knew that the long agony of the prison 
life, which had bowed his frame, broken his health, and 
shattered his nerves, if not his very intellect, was noth- 
ing in comparison with the secret tortures of the success- 
ful man who stood in purple and fine linen before him. 

“ Repent,” continued the dean, in a voice of agonized 
supplication, “while repentance is possible. Put away 
the darling sin, whatever it may be, before it is inex- 
tricably wound about your heart-strings; remember 
that every moment's delay makes the heart harder and 
the task more difficult. Cut off the right hand, 
pluck out the right eye — ” 

He broke off abruptly, turned pale to the lips, and 
seemed for a moment to fight for breath. “ Oh, my 
God! ” he exclaimed at last, in low, agonized, shuddering 
tones, so different from the full voice of impassioned 
appeal he had been using, that they sent an electric shock 
through the hushed listeners, while the chill drops beaded 
his brow, and he gazed fixedly with horror-struck eyes 
before him, like one compelled by some irresistible spell 
to gaze on what his soul most abhors. 

It was the most acute moment in Everard's life, one to 
be remembered when all else had faded — the moment 
when betrayer and betrayed met face to face, gazing into 
each other's eyes under a fascination that each strove 


324 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


vainly to resist. Under the spell of the dean’s eloquence, 
Everard had gradually advanced his head from the shel- 
ter of the pillars, the gas-beaded girdle of which, in the 
deepening of the summer twilight, cast a strong illumina- 
tion upon his features, and thus attracted the preachers 
gaze. That awful meeting of glances seemed to Everard 
to endure for an eternity, during which the breathing of 
the hushed congregation and the casual stirring of a limb 
here and there were distinctly audible in the silence. 

Who shall say what these two men, between whom was 
so much love and such terrible wrong, saw in the eyes 
which had met so often in friendship in the far-olf days, 
when each trusted the other so fully? Certain it is that 
there was neither rebuke nor reproach in Everard’s gaze, 
and that the dominant feeling in his stirred heart was a 
desire to comfort the terrible misery in the false friend’s 
eyes. But though there was no reproach in the honest 
and trustful brown eyes — sunken as they were in dark 
orbits caused by long suffering — the bowed, gaunt form, 
the haggard, worn features, the sad look of habitual hope- 
less pain, the untimely gray hairs and aged appearance, 
struck into the betrayer’s soul like so many burning dag- 
gers tipped with poison. He remembered his friend as 
he had last seen him in the beauty and vigor of early 
manhood, happy, hopeful, full of intellect and life, and 
glowing with generous feeling, and the sharp contrast 
revealed to him, in one flash, the wickedness of his deed. 
There sat the friend who had loved and trusted him, 
marred, crushed, and broken by his own iniquity. 

He longed for the massive pillars to crumble to ruins, 
and the high stone roof to crash in and hide him from 
that terrible gaze, the more terrible because so gentle; 
he wished the solid pavement to yawn and swallow him 
up. A burning pain was stabbing him in the breast, the 
clusters of lights danced madly among the shadows before 
him, the great white sea of human faces surged in heav- 
ing billows in his sight, and his tongue clove to the roof 
of his mouth when he tried to speak. 

Long as it seemed to those two awe-struck gazers, it 
was in reality but a few seconds before the dean averted 
his gaze by a strong effort, and spoke. 

“I am not well,” he said quietly; and, turning, he 
descended the pulpit and vanished among the shadows. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


325 


while a canon present said a final prayer and gave the 
blessing. 

From the comments of the congregation as they 
streamed out beneath the avenue of lindens, Everard 
gathered that it was not the first time the dean had been 
taken ill while preaching, the excitement of which 
appeared to be too much for his physical strength. 

He lingered about the cathedral precincts in the pleas- 
ant summer dusk, through which a few pale stars were 
gleaming softly, and listened to the conversation around 
him, gazing wistfully at the Deanery, under a strong- 
impulse to enter it. He contented himself, however, 
with joining a little group of workingmen, who, after an 
interval, went to the house and inquired for the health of 
the popular preacher, and who were told that the dean 
had recovered from the spasmodic seizure to which he 
was subject, and was now resting. 

A clergyman had passed out of the cathedral at 
Everard’s side, with rather a strange smile on his face, 
and had observed to a lady who was with him. “ How 
did you like the play?” 

“ What do you mean?” she returned, with an indig- 
nant accent. 

“Well, did you ever see a better actor than the Angli- 
can Chrysostom?” he continued, with a sarcastic accent, 
which caused her to accuse him of professional jeal- 
ousy. 

This man had heard the last dying words of Alma 
Judkins a few hours before 

Everard was so shaken by what he experienced in the 
cathedral, that he could not return to his hotel, where 
his dinner was awaiting him, but walked rapidly through 
the dim streets and climbed the hill to breathe the free, 
fresh air of the wide downs whence he saw the city, 
starred with fire-points lying like a dropped and dimmed 
constellation in the valley beneath. 

There he thought much, walking swiftly beneath the 
clear, quiet sky, pale in the June twilight, and gleaming 
with languid stars, until something of the holy calm of 
Nature had entered his breast, and he returned, quieted, 
yet full of deeply stirred feelings, to the George Inn. 

Then he took a pen, and wrote as follows: 


326 THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND . 

“ Dear Cyril: — I need not tell you that I was in the 
cathedral to-night, since I saw with what pain you recog- 
nized me. You possess the great secret of eloquence, 
earnestness and genuine feeling, and your sermon revealed 
to me how terribly you have suffered. You will not be 
surprised to hear that I know all . I did not suspect it 
until that poor girl swore against me in the witness-box, 
when the whole truth flashed upon me, and every little 
incident connected with that sad affair became clear and 
comprehensible. That was the saddest moment in my 
life, far more bitter than the moment of my conviction 
or that of my severe sentence. The man never lived who 
was dearer to me than you, and I revered you as a man 
reveres his own conscience. I thought then that there 
could be no suffering to equal mine, but to-night I learned 
from your own lips, my poor Cyril, that there is a deeper 
anguish still, an anguish that you have borne secretly for 
eighteen mortal years beneath a semblance of outward 
prosperity. How shall I comfort you? If my forgiveness 
can avail anything, it is yours fully and freely. Remorse, 
as you said to-night, is wholly poisonous; it is futile to 
lament the unreturning past. Dear Cyril, let us manfully 
face the consequences, and cease bewailing what cannot 
be mended. Much peace and usefulness, yes, and much 
happiness, may yet be yours. I have suffered not only 
the penalty, but an exceeding penalty for that tragic 
moment in the wood — against my will, it is true; but now 
I ask you, who believe in vicarious sacrifice, to take those 
eighteen years as a free gift, and remember that, as far 
as this life is concerned, that poor fellow’s death has been 
amply atoned for. I see that you are struggling with 
yourself to confess and make atonement before the world, 
but the time has gone by for that, and it could avail 
nothing now. Lilian has always been convinced of my 
innocence, and nearly all others to whom my good name 
was dear are gone. I have lived through the obloquy as 
far as the world is concerned; the revelation of the truth 
could only bring sorrow unspeakable to many, and no 
help to me. Besides, you have unusual gifts; you have 
acquired a position and a character which give you singu- 
lar power over men; you ought not to trifle with these. 
If I am to be useful to my fellow-creatures, it must be in 
quite other ways. But you, with your remarkable gifts and 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 327 

the great position you have achieved, have also incurred 
a great responsibility, and the very failings and faults 
which have caused such pain have led you through such 
unusual paths of spiritual experience as may give you 
unusual power in dealing with the sickness of men's 
souls. You have told men the terrors of remorse; tell 
them now the peace of repentance, the joy of forgiveness. 
If you need a penance, take that of silence on that one 
sad subject. Let that lie between you and me as a bond 
of friendship, and let it be heard in the ears of men no 
more; and let us meet again on the old-pleasant footing. 
I have seen and spoken with your son, and heard his 
beautiful voice, and I am glad that he bears our 
name. May Heaven’s blessing and peace be yours 
forever! 

“ Your friend, 

“He^ry Everard.” 

It was not until the following morning that the dean 
received this letter, along with many others, at breakfast. 

Physical pain had mercifully come to his relief in the 
moment of extreme agony in the cathedral, and so 
benumbed and clouded his mental faculties. It had fur- 
ther obliged him to use a prescription of his physician’s 
intended for such seizures, and of an anaesthetic nature, 
so that he had passed the night in artificial slumber, if 
that could be called slumber which was animated by a 
continual torturing consciousness of the dreaded face 
he had seen in the cathedral, and an unspeakable 
terror of some impending descent into yet greater 
misery. 

Yet he awoke in the morning so permeated with this 
dread consciousness that he had got to face the shock of 
emerging from the balm of oblivion to a new and unfa- 
miliar grief, the shock that greets us on the threshold 
of a new day with such a numbing power in the begin- 
ning of a fresh sorrow. Of course, he had contemplated 
the possibility of such a meeting as that of the previous 
evening, but he had no idea it was so near, since Lilian 
had long ceased to give him any intelligence of Everard, 
and also, with his characteristic unreason, he hoped 
something might in the mean time turn up. Everard’s 
death was one of these bright possibilities. 


328 


THE ' SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


He did not recognize the handwriting, changed as it 
was by long disuse and the stiffening of the joints result- 
ing from habitual hard labor, and ran rapidly through 
the pile of letters, taking the known correspondents 
first. It was only when he had opened the envelope, and 
read the familiar commencement of “ Hear Cyril,” that 
the writing struck a chord in his memory, and he turned 
with a sick dread to the signature. 

Marion saw him turn livid, and then, when he glanced 
rapidly over the contents, flush a deep red. Then he 
laid the letter aside, and went on quietly with his break- 
fast, joining, in his accustomed manner, in the house- 
hold chat; but he ate little, which Marion attributed to 
his recent seizure and the anodyne he had taken. 

Immediately after breakfast he went to his study, giv- 
ing orders to Benson, as he frequently did, that he was 
on. no account to be disturbed till luncheon, at which 
meal he appeared as usual. 

Marion observed, and remembered afterward, that he 
was extremely pale and very quiet, only addressing herself 
and her brother occasionally, and then with unusual gen- 
tleness. He was always gentle to them, for he was a 
most tender father, passionately fond of his children, and 
having the art, by virtue of his winning manner and per- 
sonal charm, to keep them in absolute discipline while 
indulging them to the utmost, so that, without ever using 
a harsh word to them, his will was their law, and they 
obeyed him without knowing it; but to-day his gentleness 
amounted to tenderness, and his voice and glances, when 
he spoke to them, were like a caress. 

“Well, Marry,” he said, breaking into a conversation 
between the children and their tutor and governess, 
which he had evidently not heard, “ what do you say to 
running down to Portsmouth to your uncle KeppePs with 
Everard for a few days?” 

# “Nothing, papa,” she replied, with her pretty, spoilt 
air. 

“Would you not like to go, dear?” he asked. “The 
sea is charming just now, and all the naval gayeties are 
in full swing. The new ironclad is waiting for you to 
inspect and help launch her, and your cousins are all at 
home, and Everard would enjoy the military bands and 
the bathing; eh, laddie?” 






THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


329 


“Well, I suppose it will be a fair time to go; but how' 
can you get away?" said Marion, when her father replied 
that he did not intend to accompany them. 

“ Then we don't want to go," she returned; and Ever- 
ard indorsed her words heartily. 

“You don’t get tired of your old father? "he asked, 
his eyes clouding and his voice quivering a little. 

“There never was such a daddy-sick pair," laughed 
Miss Mackenzie. 

“But you cannot always be tied on to the old father," 
said the dean, pinching Marion’s soft cheek. “ Come 
now, suppose you pack up your smartest bonnets and 
frocks, and Everard’s violin, and run down this afternoon. 
Your aunt Keppel will be at the station to meet you at 
six." 

“To-day? Oh, papa! what can possess you?" cried 
Marion. 

“Oh, not till Monday!" pleaded Everard. “I am to 
take a solo to-morrow afternoon." 

“Never mind the solo, lad," said his father, looking 
wistfully on the boy’s sightless face. “ Doctor Kydal 
will recover from the shock; a little adversity will do him 
good, autocrat that he is. You will go, darlings, by the 
4.30 train. And if the bonnets and frocks are not smart 
enough for fashionable Southsea, you can get what you 
want there. Here is a check, Marry. And there, Ever- 
ard, is a sovereign for you to buy toffee with. Herr 
Obermann is tired of his unmanageable pupil, and will be 
glad of a holiday to rummage over old parchments with 
Canon Drake;" and the dean rose from the table with a 
look that said that the business was concluded, and 
strolled languidly into the garden, Everard’s hand in his. 

“ Miss Mackenzie," said Marion, remaining behind a 
minute, “ there is something unusual about papa to-day. 
Do you think I ought to leave him? He ate nothing; 
he looks ill." 

“ He is always languid and weak after one of his 
attacks, Marry. The great thing is not to worry him, and 
of course, he has a great deal on his mind now. Perhaps, 
until the bishopric business is quite decided, he would 
rather have you out of the way." 

Miss Mackenzie’s words were reasonable, and Marion felt 
that she must abide by them, and yet she could not con- 


330 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


quer the vague disquiet she felt on her father’s account. 
She followed him into the old-fashioned, red-walled gar- 
den with a solicitude hitherto unknown in her spoiled- 
child existence, and watch him narrowly. 

“ You are becoming a perfect ogre, daddy, hustling us 
off in this despotic manner; now, isn't he Everard?" she 
said, joining them. 

“ A regular tyrant/* laughed the boy. “ But, I say, 
why can't you come with us, papa? It is on your way to 
Osborne." 

“ Of course it is; how delightful! " added Marion. 

“ I am not going to Osborne," replied the dean. 

“Not going to dine at Osborne to-night? " exclaimed 
the children, who knew that a royal invitation is also a 
command. “ Why, what will the Queen say? Will she 
send you to the Tower?" asked Everard, his mind filled 
with visions of scaffolds and axes. 

“Never mind the Queen," said the dean, sitting down 
on a garden seat and placing the boy between his knees, 
and passing his arm round the girl with a grave and pre- 
occupied air, which surprised his daughter, whom he was 
wont perpetually to tease and banter in a way that she 
thought delightful. Neither of them spoke for a few 
minutes, and then the dean asked the children if they 
were happy, and they replied heartily in the affirmative, 
adding that they were always happy with him, and 
thought all pleasures dull without him. 

“ I have tried to make you happy," he said, in his rich, 
pathetic tones; “ I have wished so much to give you a 
happy youth to look back upon. My own youth was 
very, very happy, and I have always been so thankful for 
it; it is a possession for a whole lifetime, in spite of the 
sorrow with which the world is filled, and which we must 
all plunge into sooner or later. Your father is a sinful 
man, dear children, but he has tried to be good to you — 
that has been his greatest earthly aim. And you have 
been dutiful and affectionate. I am a successful man, 
and have been able to give you a pleasant home, but who 
can say if it may last? Trouble may come — we may be 
parted. Well, dears, if that time comes, think gently of 
the father who, whatever his faults were, earnestly sought 
his children's happiness." 

The children protested with half-frightened affection, 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


331 


but he scarcely heeded them, and, gently unwinding 
their clasping hands, withdrew, unable to speak for tears, 
and, waving them olf with a gesture of command, went 
back to his study. 

“Oh, Marry!” cried Everard, “something dreadful 
has happened. Perhaps the Queen is angry. What can 
it be?” 

Marion comforted him with all the wisdom of her 
sixteen years, saying that there was probably some hitch 
about the bishopric, and this had saddened their father. 

He took them to the station and saw them off, arrang- 
ing all he could for their comfort and security, and 
embraced them on the public platform with unusual ten- 
derness, apparently oblivious of all the bustle and noise 
going on around him. He put a basket of fruit into their 
hands to refresh them on the road when they were in the 
carriage, and then stood on the step and kissed and 
blessed them solemnly once more, and, when the train 
finally moved off, stood wistfully gazing until the last flut- 
ter of Marion’s handkerchief was invisible in the distance. 

All her life Marion remembered his yearning gaze and 
his pale, sad face, as he stood without a trace of his usual 
playful animation when in their presence, a solitary black 
figure, watching them with his hand shading his eyes, 
until the distance had swallowed them up. 

“ Can you see him still? ” asked the blind boy. 

“Not now; he is lost,” replied Marion; and she burst 
into tears under the pressure of an indefinable sadness. 


CHAPTER V. 

Everard slept like an infant after writing his letter, 
and rose full of eager hope and trembling anticipation on 
the morrow, remembering that the day had at last 
dawned when he was to meet Lilian once more. 

He might have seen her many times during his impris- 
onment, but he could not endure that she should submit 
to the restraints necessarily imposed on convicts’ visitors, 
or that she should see him in his humiliation, and had 
thus declined her offered visits. He could not even bear 


332 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


to go to her straight from prison; he felt that some days 
at least were necessary to carry olf the prison air and take 
away the contamination of those hated walls. He looked 
in a glass, and sighed deeply, thinking that he saw 
plainly written all over him, “ ticket-of-leave man.” As 
for his hands, which he had treated with unguents and 
cosmetics, and kept 'night and day in gloves, he looked at 
them in despair. The flattened finger-tips, broken and 
discolored nails, distorted joints, and horn-hardened 
palms were beyond redemption. It seemed to his sensi- 
tive fancy that all the world must know as well as he that 
his peculiar gait was the result of the irons he had worn 
after his brief escape, and the sick thought came to him 
that his intellect must be as much marred as his body. 
He felt utterly ruined. 

He lingered about Belminster till the afternoon, se- 
cretly cherishing a hope that Cyril might send some letter 
or message to the George for him; but nothing came, and 
he took his seat in the train with a disappointed heart. 

A clergyman, in a round felt hat with a rosette and the 
longest of coats, was just stepping out of the down train 
as Everard was stepping in. They came face to face, and 
Everard stepped back to allow the other to pass, thus 
gaining a full and prolonged view of his features, while 
the clergyman passed gravely on, carelessly scanning 
Everard^s face \vithout a gleam of recognition in his own. 
But Everard knew him at once. It was his brother 
George. 

Everard got in, the doors banged, the train moved off, 
and he found that his carriage, was shared by an elderly 
man with a clever, keen face, which seemed strangely 
familiar to him, though he could not identify it, search 
his memory as he would. The old gentleman apparently 
had the same degree of memory for Everard, since, after 
his first searching glance at him when he entered the 
carriage, he kept giving him furtive and puzzled looks 
over his papers. Presently the papers of both gentlemen 
were laid aside, and the stranger moved over to the cor- 
ner seat opposite Everard, evidently prepared for a 
friendly chat, and made some remark on the line over 
which they were passing. His voice sent a strange tremor 
through Everard^s too sensitive nerves, and, after a brief 
interchange of commonplace, he told his vis-a-vis that 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


333 


his face and voice were familiar to him, but that he was 
unable to recall his name. 

_ “ You are associated in my mind with something of a 
distressing nature," he added. 

“ I was just about to observe the same with regard to 
you," replied his new-found acquaintance, “ save that you 
are associated with nothing distressing to me. To tell 
the truth, my features are associated with distressing 
circumstances in a great many people’s minds," ho 
added, laughing. “ My name is Manby, Sir William 
Manby," he explained, with the air of one uttering a rich 
joke. 

“ I now remember you perfectly," returned Everard, 
quietly, “though I cannot claim the honor of your 
acquaintance. My name is Everard, Henry Oswald 
Everard, and when I last saw you, you sentenced me 
to twenty years’ penal servitude for a crime which I never 
committed." 

“ Good God! " exclaimed the judge, starting back with 
momentary dismay, but quickly recovering himself, and 
putting up his gold-rimmed eye-glasses and closely scruti- 
nizing him. “Henry Everard, to be sure! Yes, yes, I 
remember the case perfectly. The jury were unanimous, 
the evidence clear;" and the judge thought within him- 
self that to be alone in a railway carriage with a man one 
has given twenty years for a manslaughter one believes to 
be murder is an awkward thing. " 

“The evidence was indeed clear," said Everard, “but 
it was misleading, nevertheless, and there was a terrible 
miscarriage of justice." 

The quiet air with which he spoke, and the look of his 
careworn face, impressed the judge. He could not help 
giving some credence to his words. 

“ If you were indeed not guilty. Doctor Everard," he 
said, after looking thoughtfully at him for some 
moments, “there must have been some very hard swear- 
ing." 

“There was," replied Everard. “There was perjury 
on the part of one witness." 

“ Its motive? " 

“ To shield the real culprit." 

“ The law gives you a remedy if you can but prove the 
perjury," said the judge. 


334 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


“ I do not wish to prosecute,” replied Everard. 
“ Besides, what court can give me back those years of 
imprisonment? ” 

u How many did you serve?” 

“Eighteen.” 

“Eighteen years,” returned the judge, his thoughts 
running back through that period of time, and taking 
count of the things that had occurred and the changes 
that had been wrought in it; “ eighteen years! And you 
were then a young man.” 

Everard smiled sadly at the contrast these words im- 
plied. 

“Then, you are only recently unlodged?” Sir William 
added. 

“ Last Monday. I have a ticket-of-leave.” 

The judge looked at the broken and prematurely aged 
man with an inward shudder. He thought of the long 
line of malefactors he had sentenced, not only to impris- 
onment, but even to death, and wondered if he could 
have pronounced those sentences if he had been doomed 
to see them carried out. 

“ I well remember the pain with which I passed your 
sentence,” he said. “A judge need have a heart of iron 
and nerves of steel. But the evidence was so clear.” 

“You could do no otherwise. The jury found me 
guilty, and I could not clear myself.” 

“Eighteen years,” continued the judge, in a voice 
which had a quiver in it. “I am an old man, Doctor 
Everard, an old man, and it cannot be many years at the 
latest before I must stand at the bar of a justice that 
cannot miscarry, but if I thought I had condemned a 
fellow-creature unjustly to eighteen years’ imprisonment 
with hard labor — ” 

“ Do not think it, dear sir,” interrupted Everard, try- 
ing to soothe the rising agitation in the old man’s 
mind; “the injustice cannot be laid to your charge. 
No human tribunal can be infallible; but, as you say, 
there is a Judge who cannot err, and when you and I 
are confronted at that bar, your verdict upon me will 
be reversed without blame to yourself.” 

“I trust so, I trust so,” replied the old man; “and, in 
the mean time, I hope that you bear me no ill-will.” 

“ Heaven forbid, whose instrument you are!” returned 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


335 


Everard, taking and warmly pressing the hand the judge 
offered him. 

“I shall desire your further acquaintance, sir/' said 
the old gentleman, when the train steamed into the Old- 
port Station; “ if not now, in a better world than this." 

And they parted, Everard leaving the carriage, and 
standing with a throbbing heart on the platform, while 
his portmanteau was placed on a fly, and thinking how 
great was the contrast between his manner of leaving that 
station and returning to it. He left it in the keen 
wintry fog, with handcuffed wrists, in charge of consta- 
bles, and returned shaking hands with his judge in the 
warm June sunshine. 

It was strange to see the little well-known town basking 
in the summer heat, and filled with the familiar, homely 
stir of the market-day, just as it had done all those years 
ago, and he looked about at the houses and shops, with 
their friendly air of recognition, to see if there were any 
faces he knew. There stood the town hall, the earliest 
scene of his terrible humiliation, with its familiar colon- 
nade and balcony, its clock striking four in the old 
home-like tones, and the gilt figures on its dial burning 
in the bright sunbeams. The stolid policemen were 
standing in the square in front of it, as they had done in 
the days of his trial. He recognized one, a gray-headed 
man in the stripes and dress of a sergeant, as the middle- 
aged constable who had conducted him to the magis- 
terial presence, and wondered if the man remembered 
him. 

The carriage seemed at the same time to crawl and to 
fly in the medley of feelings which urged him onward 
and backward. Would they never get out of Oldport? 
The streets were cumbered with carriers' carts and 
wagons; droves of pigs and bewildered cattle; dense- 
looking farmers, shabbily dressed, but concealing a fund 
of shrewd sense beneath their stolid countenances, and 
having well-lined pocket-books in their queer old coat- 
pockets, and denser-looking laborers, whose heavy air of 
stupidity was half assumed and half on the surface. 

Smart new suburbs had put forth a pert growth in 
those eighteen years and joined the little town to its 
quiet village neighbor, Chalkburne, the solid gray tower 
of which looked down as usual from its centuries of gray 


336 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


calm on the fitful stir and fret around it, and the fevered 
hopes and fears that must end at last in the quiet green 
mounds at its feet. And now at last the hill beyond 
Chalkburne was climbed; they were on the white chalk 
road that wound along by the downs. There were the 
woods of Swaynestone in the distance, and beyond them 
the unseen tower of Malbourne Church, and beneath 
that the Eectory, with its long-buried treasure of love and 
hope and trust. 

The little bays along the coast shone in azure calm, 
and showed the silver gleam of a sail here and there; the ' 
woods spread their fresh green domes toward the sea; the 
scent of mown grass filled the air, and the brown-armed j 
hay-makers were busy in the meadows. It was all so 
familiar, and yet so strange to his prison- worn eyes. 

Now they passed Swaynestone, where Sir Lionel i 
reigned no more, having been gathered to his fathers; 
and there, on the left, stood the sham Greek temple, its ] 
colonnade gleaming white in the sunlight, and its archi- 
trave sharply outlined against the fatal green coppice 3 
cresting the hill behind it. Everard could not see this 
spot, the source of so much misery, without a shudder, 
nor could the tenderer associations of his walk there with 
Lilian efface the horror of it from his mind. 

And now that too was left behind, and there were only j 
a few fields between him and Malbourne, and his pulses I 
throbbed. All these pleasant home scenes were the same 
as in the old times, only the eyes which looked upon 
them were changed. Not a homestead or cottage was j 
removed; there were no new buildings. The workshops ( 
of the wheelwright were now in sight. He could see a 
man in a paper cap hammering in its dark interior; then 
the cottage, with its wicket opening on to the road, j 
and its two lime-trees arching over the path in front ' 
of the porch; then the yard, cumbered with a litter of 
timber and broken-down wagons, the scene of endless | 
games with Cyril and the wheelwrights boys; and then 
the corner was turned, and the well-known village street, 1 
with the square, gray tower at the end lay before him. 

He stopped at the Sun, to leave his portmanteau. He 
felt that he could not go on; a sudden horror over- 
whelmed him at the sight of the home he had left so 
different a being, and all the degradation and suffering of 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


337 


those eighteen years seemed to rise up and stand between 
him and the woman for whom he had dreamed so different 
a destiny. He had pictured this moment so often in the 
solitude of his cell, and dwelt with such rapture upon his 
reunion with Lilian as the end of all that bitter misery, 
that he had not thought of the terrible change time and 
sutfering had wrought in him till now, when it rushed in 
upon him like a flood. 

Love never grows old; the lover is always the same 
within, and Everard's mental pictures of Lilian and him- 
self always portrayed them both in the flower of youth, 
and were filled with youth's tender glamour. Perhaps he 
even thought unconsciously that their meeting would 
efface the ravages of those weary years from his life, with 
all that was sorrowful and distressing. 

And now he stood within sight of the roof that shel- 
tered her, face to face with the sorrowful fact that youth 
had vanished forever, and that the best part of the life 
they should have spent together was gone beyond recall. 
Only the fragments of life remained now — only the 
wrecks and floating spars of his own ship of life and of 
Lilian's. 

He now remembered that she too must have changed. 
Her youth was also gone; incredible as it appeared, she 
too had suffered and borne the weight of sorrow-laden 
years. What if they should not be able to recognize each 
other? What if each found a stranger in the place of the 
beloved? Would not their meeting be too severe a test 
for human constancy? 

Shaken by these half-morbid thoughts, the broken 
man entered the little hostelry, and, taking pen and ink, 
wrote to apprise Lilian of his arrival, and to appoint an 
hour for calling at the Rectory; for he felt that he could 
not go there unexpectedly, and drop in like a chance vis- 
itor, with the possibility of seeing her for the first time in 
public. He wished also to warn her that she must not 
expect to see the Henry of old days again, but only the 
shattered wreck of a man who had long left youth and 
hope behind. 

Having dispatched the note, he sat down and waited m 
the little parlor assigned him, in a state of tense excite- 
ment, which made the slightest sound, the ticking of a 
clock, the sound of wheel or hoof on the road, unbearable. 

' 22 


338 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


At last he sprang up and passed through the open 
French window into the old-fashioned cottage garden, 
where , stood a rude summer-house, with a table and 
wooden settles, in which the village parliament was often 
held on summer evenings. A side-window of the bar 
gave upon the garden, and, pacing restlessly up and down 
the flagged path, Everard heard through the casement, 
which stood open to the summer air, the familiar twang 
of the local dialect borne by rustic voices upon his ear. 

He glanced in as he passed, and recognized a face or 
two through all the mists and shadows of those years. 
George Straun, the burly blacksmith, stood as sturdy as 
ever, though his hair was now well powdered by the hand 
of Time. He recognized Stevens, the clerk, the years 
having altered his outward man but little, though they 
had made him more garrulous and opinionated than 
ever. 

“Ay, Jarge Straun,” he was saying, “ there's a vine 
weight of grass hereabouts, zur e-ly. I don't mind a heav- 
ier crop as I knows on this twenty year. Athout 'twas 
the year Ben Lee come by's death.” 

“I minds that there crop,” returned William Grove 
whom Everard had not recognized — “ well I minds 'un. 
That there spring there was a power o' hrain come 
down.” 

“ And a vine zummer as ever I zee,” added Stevens, 
“and the graves as easy to dig as easy; the sile entirely 
crumbed up wi' the drought, a did. And the grass was 
well zaved. Granfer, 'ee zaid as how 'ee didn't mind 
more'n dree or vour zummers like he all’s life, Granfer 
didn’t. That was the zummer ater Dr. Everard done for 
poor Ben Lee — ay, that 'twas.” 

“Ah!” growled the blacksmith, withdrawing his 
broad face from the eclipse of his pewter pot, and passing 
his hand slowly over his mouth, “ he never done that. 
Dr. Everard didn't.” 

“Zo you zays, Jarge Straun. And zay it you med 
till you was black i' the vaace, but you wouldn't vetch 'un 
out o' jail,” retorted Stevens, resuming a battle that had 
raged incessantly for the last eighteen years between the 
village worthies, whom the question had split into two 
unequal factions. 

“ I zeen 'un myself,” continued Straun, leader of the 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


339 


not guilty faction, “ a-gwine down street in the vull 
daylight. And he hadn't no gray clo'es on. ’8 coat was 
so black as my hat. Wei? I minds 'un! Passed the 
time o' day, he did, and looked as pleased as Punch. He 
never done vur Ben Lee, bless ye! " 

“ You be ter'ble clever, Jarge Straun; but you never 
kep’ 'un out o' jail wi' all yer cleverness," said Stevens. 
“You never zeen no black coat that arternoon, ’thout 
'twas yer own. Why, Lard love ye, I zeen 'un myself, as 
I zaid avore the justices.- He come out o' Rectory gair- 
den, and went up vield wi' 's gray clo'es on. He couldn't 
'a been in two places at a time, nor he couldn't 'a wore 
two coats at a time, ye noghead. I zeen 'un 's plain as 
plums, I tell 'ee. I passes 'un the time o' day, and he 
never zeemed to hear and never zaid nothun. Vur why? 
He was a-gwine out a-breakin' the Ten Commandments, 
a- murderin' o' poor Ben Lee." 

“ He never done it," reiterated the blacksmith, stolidly. 

“ Not he didn't," added William Grove. “ He zeen 
my little maid and give her a penny, and she've a got 'un 
now." 

“ And he zeen Granfer at vive o'clack, when them 
maids swore they zeen him come home in 's gray clo'es," 
added Hale, the wheelwright. “And he ast Granfer if 
he'd a-yeard the bell-team go by, he did. And Granfer 
he np and zays, f I ain't a-yeard 'un go by zince dinner- 
time, not as I knows on, I ain’t,' he zays, zays Granfer. 
And Dr. Everard, he zays a power o' things to Granfer— 
many a time Granfer have a zaid it in this yer Sun Inn — 
a power o' things Dr. Everard zaid, and a power o' things 
Granfer said to he. And Dr. Everard, he outs wi' a 
shil'n' and gives it to Granfer. And he keeps that there 
shil'n' to 's dying day, Granfer does. And there ain't a 
man in this yer bar but have zeen that ar shil'n' and 
a-handled 'un," he concluded, triumphantly looking 
round with the sense of having finally clinched his argu- 
ment. 

“Ay, William Hale," returned Stevens, sarcastically, 
“you've got a power o' words inzide o' ye, when zo be as 
you can zim to bring 'em out. But Zir Ingram, he zeen 
'un a runnin' across that ar vield just avore vive. Ay, 
it's a likely thing as Zir Ingram shouldn't know if lie zeen 
a man or .a mouse. The likes o' he don't goo a-swearin' 


340 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


they zeen what they never zeen. Granfer — I won’t zaj 
nothin’ agen he — he’d a powerful mind, had Granfer, 
but. Lard love ye, what’s a powerful mind agen a eddica- 
tion like Zir Ingram’s? Granfer, he’d a giv’ his mind to 
most things, but he hadn’t had no book-larning, zo to zay, 
hadn’t Granfer. He could count, and he could read 
print wi’ leavin’ out the big words, zo well as any man I 
knows on, but ’s eddication was effective; it didn’t come 
up to Zir Ingram’s college scholarding, it didn’t. Haw, 
naw.” 

A pause ensued, the little company feeling crushed by 
the weight of Stevens’s long words, a species of powerful 
artillery that he only brought to bear on his adver- 
sary when hard pressed. Then Tom Hale, who some 
time ere this had beaten his sword into a wheelwright’s 
tools, took up his parable on this wise: 

“ He never done it, Doctor Everard didn’t.” 

“ If he never done it, who did?” inquired the landlord, 
pertinently. 

“ Darn it all!” said William Grove, driving his haud 
through his bushy hair in dire perplexity, and repeating 
the phrase he had used any time this eighteen years, 
“zomebody done it. Why, I vound the body meself! 
Well I minds it. ’Twas a vrosty night, and I vound ’un 
all stiff and stark. Nobody can’t zay nothin’ agen that, 
when I zeen ’un wi’ my own eyes. And I run into Master 
Hale’s as was keepin’ up New Year’s Eve wi’ a party, and 
I zays, and you yeard me plain enough, ‘ Lord ’a massy 
on us!’ I zays, zays I, ‘they hen and done vur poor Ben 
Lee!’ I zays; and Granfer, he yeard me.” 

“Ay, and Granfer he ups and zays, zays he, ‘You 
med all ,mark my words,’ he zays, ‘somebody’ll ha’e to 
swing fur this yer.’ ^ Them was Granfer’s words,” said 
the wheelwright looking round with great solemnity. 

“ Zomebody done it,” continued Stevens, with author- 
ity, “and if ’twasn’t Doctor Everard, who was it as done 
it? Athout ’twas Mr. Maitland hisself,” he added, with 
intense sarcasm, “ or maybe Mr. Cyril. Zomebody done 
it, that’s as plain as plums.” 

“ He never done it,” repeated the sturdy blacksmith, 
finishing his ale and stamping off homeward with a sullen 
“ Good-night ” to all. 

“ There was Alma Lee,” continued the landlord, who 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND.' 341 

never liked a good argument conducing to the dryness of 
the inner man to drop, “she knowed who done it. And 
she sweared dead agen the doctor, she did.” 

“ And she med swear,” commented William Grove; 
“she was a bad 'un. Them there stuck-up gals isn't 
never up to no good. Mr. Maitland, and they up Rectory, 
they had the sp'ilin’ o' she.” 

“Ay!” growled the wheelwright; “poor Charlie Jud- 
kins! What he took out to 'Merriky wi' 'un warn't no 
account, nohow.” 

“ A baddish cargo 'twas,” added Tom Hale; and the 
whole company joined in condemning the unfortunate 
girl with the wholesale condemnation dealt out by men 
to the woman who makes the smallest slip on the slippery 
path of right. 

Just then the dear old familiar voice of the church 
clock told the hour, sending a quiver through Everard’s 
frame with every stroke of its mellow bell; and, passing 
through the garden gate into the village street, he bent 
his steps toward the Rectory. 


CHAPTER VI. 

Every feature of the well-remembered scene was the 
same, only the faces of the people were altered. Men were 
working in their little gardens, women standing at wicket 
gates with babies in their arms, children playing in the 
dusty road. The forge was all aglow, its furnace show- 
ing lurid red in contrast with the evening sunbeams. 
Straun's eldest son, a stout fellow over thirty, was deal- 
ing his ringing blows upon the anvil, in the cheery famil- 
iar rhythm of his craft. 

The little band of children who always cluster about a 
forge were sporting round it, and turned to stare at the 
stranger. A tiny creature tottered away from its child - 
nurse, and stood open-armed in Everard's path, greeting 
him with a joyous gurgle. He patted the flaxen head, 
and passed on with a kind word. He was glad to see 
children run to him with confidence. 

Every step on the familiar path made his heart beat 


342 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


more wildly. Something was rising chokingly in his 
throat, so that he was afraid to trust himself farther on, 
and paused, leaning against the churchyard wall, behind 
which he could see the inscription on Granfer’s tombstone, 
and imagined that he saw female figures emerging from 
the Rectory gate or strolling under the trees, and asked 
himself, “Is it she?” 

It was no fancy. A tangible, solid woman’s form was 
indeed pacing, heavily pacing, the gravel drive; the form 
was stout, the hair iron-gray, the gait clumsy. A sick 
fear took him, and he remembered that Lilian was five- 
and-twenty eighteen long years ago. The lady opened 
the gate and issued forth, her features showing distinctly 
in the rich sunlight. They were heavy, commonplace, 
and quietly contented, and he did not recognize the 
once pretty Miss Garrett of Horthover, now the mother 
of half a dozen stout lads. 

He recovered from this miserable, nervous weakness, 
and walked stoutly on, growing paler as he approached 
the beloved house. It was a delicious evening. The air 
was still and pure, and balmy with the scent of flowers 
and hay; the long sunbeams touched the woods and 
downs with tender glory; the swallows were darting 
round the tower, whose gray face was gilded by the west- 
ern glow, and glancing across the pure, pale sky, their 
bodies gleaming with gold, like the doves of Scripture, 
“Whose feathers are like gold;” down in the thickets 
the thrushes and blackbirds were pouring out their even- 
ing lay ; and a pair of larks were maddening each other 
with the rival raptures of their song overhead. 

He passed the bit of green on which Lennie and Dickie 
Stevens were fighting on the winter afternoon when he 
left it, handcuffed and amazed. He opened the gate and 
entered. There was the laburnum planted on the birth- 
day^ a great tree now; down there they used to play at 
Robinson Crusoe. The great pear-tree was still standing 
from which Cyril fell that far-off autumn day; he could 
even now see the boy lying white and still on the grass, 
hear Lilian’s cry of terror, and recall the sick pang with 
which lie thought he might be killed. 

He reached the door, and a mist came before his eyes, 
whirling so that he could not see the bell-handle for a 
few seconds, and had to grope for it. The bell echoed 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


343 


through a silent house; he heard footsteps coming 
along the well-known corridor and through the hall; 
the door opened, and disclosed the blooming face of a 
parlor-maid, who regarded him without interest. “ Is 
Miss Maitland at home?” he asked, in a voice from 
which every vestige of tone had vanished. 

“ Yes, sir. What name, if you please?” 

<tf Doctor Everard,” he faltered huskily, and a terror 
came over him, and made him think that he should have 
to turn back, unable to face the moment. 

The maid, however, whisked airily on to the drawing- 
room door, which she opened, pronouncing his name with 
metallic clearness. 

In the well-known room all seemed dark after the 
bright external sunshine. The Venetians were closed 
against the western glow, and the deep gloom was em- 
phasized here and there by a long rod of golden light 
falling through the chinks. He stood irresolute just 
within the door. A figure rose from the far end, and he 
heard, in Lilian’s pure and silvery tones, one cry of 
“ Henry! ” as she moved toward him. 

For a space he seemed both blind and deaf, and then 
all the painful agitation fell away from him, the sick 
yearning of the long years was stilled, the nervous weak- 
ness gone. He was healed and calmed, himself once 
more; for it was indeed Lilian who stood before him — 
the same, same Lilian, with the sweetest soul that ever 
looked from clear eyes gazing up into his own, the Lilian 
of his young love, the Lilian of his long, pining prison- 
dreams. 

Those first few moments were too tense for memory; 
neither of the reunited lovers was ever able to recall any- 
thing but a dream-like sense of happiness from them; each 
spoke, but neither remembered what was said. The first 
moment of distinct daylight consciousness was when they 
found themselves sitting hand in hand on the couch 
which had been Mrs. Maitland’s through so many years 
of weakness, silent and happy and perfectly calm. 

Everard was wholly pervaded by a sense of Lilian’s 
pure and wholesome presence; he was soothed and blessed 
by it, as one is by the beauty of some fresh and fair sum- 
mer evening, when the whole earth is bathed in the purity 
of soft and cloudless light, and the stainless air is stilled 


344 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


as if to listen to the voices of the sea and the forest and 
the bridal songs of many birds. Such had always been 
the effect of her presence. It had ever brought him 
renewal and fresh strength, together with the calm of 
perfect happiness; but now, after the long abstinence, 
the eighteen years’ fast, the effect was tenfold. 

They sat a long time thus, forgetful of everything but 
the divine rapture of that long-desired moment, forgetful 
of all the wrong and misery, the sin and degradation and 
loss of the weary years that had parted them, forgetful of 
every creature but each other; and then Lilian began to 
speak of those he had loved, and at last rose from the 
pleasant shadows and went to the bay window. 

“ It is dark,” she said, in the beloved remembered 
voice; “ we will have light.” 

And in a moment she had drawn up the rattling 
Venetian blind, and the full blaze of evening sunshine 
poured in upon her. It crowned her rich hair with new 
glory, it fell like a benediction upon her calm brow and 
finely curved lips, it clothed her form with a robe of radi- 
ance, as she stood erect, and well-poised in the perfection 
of grace that is only possible to a form of beautiful pro- 
portions, her head slightly thrown back, her glance 
raised to the glowing sky, and one arm, from which the 
lace fell backward, extended in the act of drawing the 
cord. She stood in the magic glow transfigured, exalted 
by the deep emotion of the moment, and wearing, in 
Everard’s eyes, a brighter glory than that of youth. 

There had ever been in Lilian an enduring charm over 
which years could have no power — a something so supe- 
rior to beauty that it made people forget to ask if that 
divine gift were hers, and which also made it impossible 
to think of age or youth in connection with her. Though 
it was well known that the dean was her twin-brother, 
no one ever dreamed of attributing his three-and-forty 
years to her; nor did any one commit the mistake of 
treating her as a girl. She did not grow old or fade; 
she simply developed in so harmonious a manner that 
each year of her life seemed the year of culminating 
prime. 

A minute and microscopic examination of her features 
might have enabled a physiologist to assign her the true 
tale of her years; there might have been gray hairs among 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


345 


the brown, soft waves, but no one sought them, and no 
one saw them. Health and exercise had preserved the 
fair proportions of her form; no evil thought had 
stamped its impress on the pure outline of her features; 
no fretting, no repressed and baffled faculties had left 
their wearing marks on her beautiful face. 

Good women age slowly, as great painters discovered 
when painting bereaved Madonnas. Women whose lives 
are full and whose faculties are fully employed also age 
slowly. Lilianas life had by no means been sterile. She 
had had her mother, whose life her cares had prolonged, 
to nurse; her young brother and sister to bring up; her 
father and her home to care for; the whole village, and 
all the invalids and ne’er-do-wells for miles round, to 
cherish and advise and heal. 

With an intellect less showy, but stronger and steadier 
than the dean’s, she had given him all that was best and 
most enduring in his writings; no work of his had ever 
been passed through the press without the benefit of her 
revision; there were few things he had ever done without 
her advice, in spite of the estrangement that had arisen 
between them since the date of their common sorrow. 
She had been with him in his- bereavements, and had 
tended the death-beds of his children and his wife; and 
she had been a mother to Marion and the blind Everard. 
who both loved her next to their father. 

And deep as was the sorrow which, had made her youth 
a loneliness, and blighted Everard’s hopes and her own in 
this long and terrible punishment, it was the kind of sor- 
row that purifies and elevates: it was not like the physi- 
cal suffering, the degradation, and the wearing sense of 
wrong which Everard endured; it could not crush her en- 
ergies, blunt her faculties, or stifle her intellect. She 
had not been obliged to repress the love so cruelly 
blighted; she had lived for Everard all those years, and 
had been able to keep alive hope, and even some kind of 
joy, in his breast. The sorrow had come so suddenly, 
and fallen so irrevocably, that there had been no wearing- 
agony of suspense, no struggle of hopes and fears; the 
trouble had to be met and coped with once for all, and 
through the dim vista of those long years there had always 
gleamed the hope that was* fulfilled in the present mo- 
ment. 


346 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


Everard gazed in rapt admiration on the glorified 
figure in the sunshine, and upon the well-remembered 
adored hand that was so like a spirit in its pure and slen- 
der beauty, and did not dream of helping her, it was so 
long since he had known the courtesies of life. She had 
only raised the centre blind of the bay; she now turned 
to the side blinds, and drew them up with the same light 
and strong sweep of her well-molded arm, and Everard 
now observed that she was in an evening dress of some 
light-hued and soft fabric, and wore a bunch of fresh 
roses at her neck: she was in festal array to receive him. 
The golden glory changed even as she stood, it blushed a 
sudden crimson, and died away into purest rose; the sun 
set, and only the faint and changing after-glow re- 
mained. 

Lilian now turned and saw Everard clearly in the 
fading rose-liglit, which vanished as she looked, and left 
only the hard, uncompromising light of a June evening 
behind. She saw the wistful eyes deep-sunken in the 
wasted face, the gray hair, the bowed form, and the 
worn and haggard features, with their sublime expres- 
sion of heroic suffering, and a sharp, plaintive cry broke 
from her. 

“ Henry! my poor, poor Henry! What have they done 
to you?” she cried, hastening to his side. 

He rose to meet her, and clasped the beautiful slim 
hands in his own gloved ones, and looked down into her 
tear-clouded eyes. “ I warned you what a wreck you 
would see,” he replied. “Ah, Lilian! this is not the 
man you loved.” 


“ Dearest, you must be happy now; you must forget all 
the trouble and pain,” continued Lilian, who was crying 
for very pity over him. “Ah, Henry! if love could heal 
you, you would soon be healed.” 

Henry could only fold her silently to his heart, feeling 
that he was indeed healed already. 

Soon Mr. Maitland appeared, his silver hair now snow- 
white, and his voice fainter than of old. He was much 
shocked at the change in Henry at first sight of him; but 
he recovered quickly, and welcomed him cordially in the 
exquisite Maitland manner. His first full conviction of 
Everard’s guilt had gradually disappeared, whether under 
the influence of Lilian’s long unswerving faith, or of the 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


347 


tone of Henry's letters, which had of late often been 
quoted to him, or through the softening which old age 
brings, and which disposes to increasing lenience of 
judgment, it is difficult to say. He now asked his for- 
giveness for his former want of faith in him. 

“ Dear fellow," he said, “I yield Lilian willingly to 
you, hard as it is to lose her. But you have the better 
claim, and you have waited long; my poor children, you 
have waited too long/’ he added, his eyes growing dim as 
they fell on Everard's gray hairs. 

He would not hear of Everard's leaving the house that 
night, but sent at once for his portmanteau, and told him 
that his room had been waiting for him for days. 

“ I should rather say your rooms," he explained, 
“ since Lilian could not decide whether you would prefer 
your own old room, or one less familiar, and thus had 
two arranged. But why do you keep your gloves on? 
You were wont to despise gloves in the old days." 

“Can you not guess?" asked Everard. “Did you 
ever see a mason's hands?" 

“Shall it be the old room? " asked Lilian, while her 
father turned away, more moved at *tlie thought of the 
roughened hands than he had thought it possible to be, 
and remembering Everard's intellectual gifts, and the 
rich promise of his early manhood. 

Everard's had been the ideal surgeon’s hand — strong, 
supple, smooth, and with sensitive finger-tips, and this 
skilful and scientific instrument had been blunted and 
maimed by rough mechanic labor through all the best 
years of his life, while many a sufferer had lacked its 
healing touch, and writhed under the clumsier strength 
of less delicate fingers. 

“Alas, Henry!" he exclaimed, after a pause; “I trust 
I may never know the man who let you suffer in his 
stead. I could not forgive him. 

A faint shudder passed over Lilian at these words, and 
she directed Henry's attention to a cushioned chair by 
the hearth, on which lay a round, black something, which 
proved on inspection to be Mark Antony, the cat, sleep- 
ing the sleep of the just, and snoring blissfully. 

“ Dear old Mark!" said Henry, stroking the velvet fur; 
“what, alive still?" 

“He has retired from active service," observed Mr. 


348 


THE SILENCE OF LEAN MAITLAND . 


Maitland, “and devotes himself to a life of contempla- 
tion — lazy old Mark ! ” 

“He is the apple of our eyes,” laughed Lilian, lifting 
him up, and letting him stretch his soft limbs and yawn 
blissfully. “I love the creature as if he were human; he 
has been my companion and comfort so long.” 

Mr. Maitland observed that, like many other gentle- 
men, Mark had taken to religion in his later years, and 
was now a regular church-goer. Every Sunday morning 
he was in the habit of trotting after his master to the 
vestry, where he had a cushion in a sunny window-sill, 
and was respectfully treated by the clerk and the choris- 
ters. 

These trivial anecdotes, which served to fill an awk- 
ward silence, presently included Cyril. 

“ We are very proud of f my son the dean/ Henry, you 
must know; our Chrysostom, our golden-mouth. You 
must hear him preach some day,” Mr. Maitland said 
finally. 

“Poor Cyril!” sighed Everard. “I stopped at Bel- 
minster on my way down, and heard him preach. A 
very fine preacher, with a singular gift. I do not wonder 
that you are proud of him.” 

“You saw Cyril?” asked Lilian, with a startled air. 

“ He does not often preach,” continued Mr. Maitland. 
“ The fact is, his nerves cannot stand the excitement; he 
throws himself too unrestrainedly into it, and it makes 
him ill.” 

“He was ill that night. Yes, I saw that he was com- 
pletely carried away. He is inspired; he is obliged to 
speak as he is moved. He said what he never dreamed 
of saving before he began.” 

“ Our dear Chrysostom! ” murmured the proud father. 
“Yes, Henry, the fire descends upon him; he has the 
true gift. Have you heard that he is to be Bishop of 
Warham? ” 

“ Poor Cyril! ” said Henry and Lilian simultaneously; 
and neither asked the other why he was to be pitied. 

But Lilian seemed anxious to avoid the topic, and, say- 
ing that the supper-hour was already past led the way 
into the dining-room, with the great cat. 

“ Puss gives me such a sense of home as I cannot ex- 
press,” said Henry, fondly stroking his unresponsive form. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


349 


“ We think his purr acquires mellowness with years/’ 
laughed Lilian. “ Henry, do you still like chicken and 
oysters and cherry-tart? Because I have dreamed for 
years of giving them to you on such an occasion as this.” 

“ And this pale port?” added Mr. Maitland, pointing 
to a cobwebbed bottle lying on a rack. “You and 
Cyril laid it down for me. It was drunk at his ordina- 
tion, his wedding, his eldest son’s christening, and his 
installation as dean. This was kept for your return, and 
there is still a bottle for the bishop’s enthronement.” 

“ They did not give us very old port or young chicken 
at Dart — ” Henry began, and stopped, seeing Lilian 
glance at the waiting-maid. He flushed, but was too 
serenely happy for any morbid regrets, and listened hap- 
pily to his host’s apology for the absence of dinner, which 
was now only a mid-day repast, owing to the declining 
health of his old age. 

Lilian’s remembrance of his old liking touched him as 
only such little things can touch, and the meal with the 
old port had almost a sacramental character for him. 
The sparkle of the silver and glass, the ordinary graces 
of a gentleman’s table, to which he had so long been a 
stranger, were beyond measure delightful to him, and he 
saw by many little indications that the fresh flowers an d 
the fruit and the very service had received the graceful 
touch of Lilian’s own hands to welcome him. 

His last free meal had been at that board and in that 
beloved presence. Since then, save for the few solitary 
repasts he had taken in hotels, he had broken the bread 
of captivity moistened with tears, and had learned almost 
to forget the simple courtesies of life. It was a pleasure 
to drink from bright engraved glass, to handle silver and 
fresh linen, to hear the kindly voice of his host, to 
observe the quiet, gliding motions of the well-trained 
maid, to see the soft glow of the lamp; much more to 
feel the beloved presence, to meet the glance^ of Lilian’s 
clear eyes, and hear the pure tones of her voice. It was 
like heaven, he said, when they parted for the night. 


350 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


CHAPTER VII. * 

The next day was Sunday, and Everard, like one in a 
blissful dream, went to the church so full of youthful 
associations, and saw many of the faces familiar to his 
youth, yet unfamiliar now because of the metamorphoses 
of time, and missed many, swept away for the most part, 
into the silence which awaits us all, and thought of the 
winter Sunday eighteen years gone, when Cyril preached 
his strange, passionate sermon on innocence. He 
thought, too, of the sermon in the cathedral, and the 
terrible anguish on the guilty man’s face, the canker that 
had been eating into his heart through all those years. 
He was glad to think that Marion was at rest. 

Upon the wall, opposite the Rectory pew, he saw a mar- 
ble tablet, on which he read the following sorrowful 
inscription: 


Sacred to the Memory of 
MARION, 

BELOVED WIFE OF 

THE VERY REVEREND CYRIL MAITLAND, D.D., 

DEAN OF BELMINSTER, 

WHO DIED AUGUST 20, 1875, 

AGED 32 YEARS, 

AND OF 

THE BELOVED CHILDREN OF THE ABOVE! 

Ernest, aged 6 years; 

Arthur and Lilian, aged 3 years; 

Cyril Everard, aged 9, Bertha, aged 3, 
and William Keppel, aged 4, who all three died in 

ONE WEEK OF THE SAME MALADY; 

and Edward Augustus, aged 1 year. 


“ O spare me a little, that I may recover my strength before I go hence, ane 
be no more seen.” 

A vision of the little band of children floated with 
pathetic grace before Everard’s eyes and he thought what 
pangs must have rent their parents* hearts when the 
earth closed over each bright little face; nor did he greatly 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 351 

wonder that Marion’s fragile existence had been crushed 
by such sorrow. The boy who had given him the bon- 
bons and played at convicts, headed the mournful list, a 
pretty, sturdy little fellow, whose name and features he 
remembered well. His heart bled for Cyril, and yet he 
thought and wondered, did Lilian think too, as she sat by 
his side, of another little group of child-faces — of other 
Cyrils and Lilians and Ernests, of the very same blood as 
those dead babes, who might have clustered around their 
hearth but for that stricken father’s sin? He thought 
also of yet another child, outcast and disowned, who 
might be wandering now in lonely manhood somewhere 
on the earth’s wide bosom. 

Lilian had told him of the sad manner in which 
Cyril’s twins were lost. They were at play on the steps 
of a bathing-machine, drawn up by a rope on a sloping 
shore, when the line parted, and the machine ran down 
into the sea, Cyril running after it with all his speed, 
and suffering the cruel anguish of seeing the children 
spring toward him only to fall into the sea, where the„ 
rollers at once swept them away from his sight forever. 
His wild effort to save them had thus caused their death. 

Marion felt it less than Cyril, who was an unusually 
affectionate father, Lilian said. Indeed, Marion had been 
strangely apathetic of late years. Her marriage was not 
a happy one. She could not understand her husband, 
she confessed to Lilian in her last hours; he was kind, 
and even tender, toward her, but she was afraid of him, 
and .grew more afraid as years went on. There was some- 
thing — she knew not what — between them, and Cyril’s 
strange and terrible melancholy was enough to depress a 
stronger nature than hers. 

“I have sometimes thought,” commented Lilian, 
“ that Marion’s continual bereavements and fragile health 
may have unhinged her mind; there was certainly some- 
thing morbid in the way in which she thought of Cyril.” 
There was a wistful appeal in Lilian’s voice as she said 
this, and an expression in the eyes which she lifted to 
Everard’s that made him shiver inwardly. 

“ I think,” he replied, gently, “ that their characters 
were unsuited to each other. Cyril needed a wife of 
stronger intellect, and Marion a man of less complex 
character, whom she could have understood and appre- 


352 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


ciated. You know, I always said that her health would 
give way under unhappiness : she needed the gentlest 
cherishing. And she is at rest now, Lilian, and it is well 
with her/' he added, with a faint tremble in his voice. 
“ I urged the marriage because I knew that the disap- 
pointment would kill her/' 

They were sitting in the bay of the drawing-room win- 
dow during this conversation, the bells were dropping 
their slow chime, laden with memories, into Everard's 
heart and ears, and people were walking churchward in 
little groups through the lane at the bottom of the 
garden. Then the drawing-room door opened suddenly, 
and, with a rustle of silk and a glow of fine raiment, a 
most beautiful young lady entered unannounced, and 
embraced Everard in a rapturous manner, calling him her 
dear Henry, and saying how delighted she was to see him 
again, and how she should have known him anywhere. 

“This is very agreeable," he replied, recovering him- 
self, “but rather embarrassing." 

• “ But don't you know me, Henry? " she cried. 

“ Have you forgotten Winnie?" asked Lilian. 

“And here is my husband. Surely you remember 
him?" said Winnie, turning to Sir Ingram Swaynestone, 
who had followed her in, with a fair-haired child in his 
hand, and who was a much more portly and imposing 
personage than he had been eighteen years ago. 

Ingram thought that the homicide, by whomsoever 
committed, had at least been unintentional. He could 
not refuse this meeting without paining the sisters, 
which he was too good-natured to do. He therefore 
tried to make the best of it. 

“I am inclined to believe that there was some mistake 
in that business of poor Lee's," he said, after greeting 
Henry, “ though it is hard to doubt the evidence of one's 
senses. I hope, Doctor Everard, we shall be able to for- 
get the parts we had to play then." 

“ I hope so," replied Everard, feeling that Swaynestone 
could not meet him without some such concession, but 
seeing very plainly that he did not doubt the evidence of 
his senses. 

“ This is our daughter Lilian," Sir Ingram added, thus 
ending a rather embarrassing pause, bidding the child go 
and shake hands, which she stoutly refused to do. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


353 


“Naughty little thing! Her father spoils her shame- 
fully/" said Winnie; “ simply for the sake of her name, 
I believe. But little girls who won't shake hands with 
gentlemen will never be like Aunt Lilian/" she added, 
severely. 

“And where is Lionel?"" asked Lilian, taking the child 
on her knee. “ Is he not going to church?"" 

y Master Lionel was not in a devout frame of mind 
this morning/" replied his father. “When requested to 
indue his go-to-meeting cloths, he threw himself on the 
ground and roared with the vigor of ten boys, so, of 
course, he had his way. Can you imagine who spoils 
Lion, Aunt Lilian?"’ 

“Poor darling!"" said Lady Swaynestone; “I am 
sure he is not well. His nervous system is so quickly 
upset."" 

“ Me don't like him hands/’ observed little Lilian at 
this juncture, pointing to Henry's hands; but, with the 
waywardness of her age, she was struck at the same 
moment by the expression of his face, and climbed on his 
knee with the utmost confidence. 

“ By the way, we had a letter from the Very Beverend 
yesterday/" said Winnie. “He wrote very hurriedly in 
answer to a business letter of Ingram's, but he said that 
Lennie's ship is coming home with the squadron; also that 
the rumor of his engagement to that girl at Malta is 
well founded, so we suppose there will be a Mrs. 'Lennie 
b'efore long."’ 

“ Father and I have long been prepared to receive the 
girl at Malta/" Lilian said; and she opened an album, 
and showed Everard the photograph of a fine young 
naval officer, whom he recognized as his old playfellow 
Lennie. 

They were setting o£ for the church, when a lady, 
dressed in a conventual garb, entered the gate and came 
to meet them. 

“ I am quite disappointed/" she said, with a smile that 
brought back old times to Everard; “I wanted to be the 
first to meet Doctor Everard, and welcome him. I see 
that you have forgotten Ethel Swaynestone, Doctor 
Everard."" 

“ I was not prepared for the dress/" replied Everard, 
wondering at the bright flush which overspread her thin, 
23 


354 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


delicate face; for he did not dream that the romance of 
her life owned him as her central figure. 

“ Doctor Everard has not yet seen the hospital, Ethel,” 
said Lilian; and then it was explained to him that Lilian 
had caused two cottages to be built, one for convalescents 
and one for sick poor people, and had placed them under 
the charge of Miss Swaynestone’s sisterhood, a sister from 
which always lived there, and, with help from Lilian, 
nursed the parish sick in their own homes or at the cot- 
tages. 

“The question is, what does Lilian not do?” com- 
mented Sir Ingram. “ She scolds all the drunkards and 
scamps; she arranges all the matrimonial squabbles — 
Winnie and I dare not for the life of us have a comforta- 
ble wrangle together; she exhorts the naughty children; 
she makes up the quarrels of sweethearts; she makes 
people's wills for them; she keeps an asylum for aged and 
useless beasts of every description; she engages servants 
that nobody else can put up with, and turns them out 
marvels of perfection; she entertains dipsomaniacs and 
other bad characters at the Kectory, and sends them back 
candidates for canonization; she tames unruly animals 
for miles round, and heals' sick ones; nobody ever dreams 
of getting married or born, or buying a field, or going to 
service, without first asking her advice; — in short, she is 
the. most fearful busybody at large. And, to crown all, 
she insists on marrying a ticket-of-leave man,” he added, 
within himself. 

It was delicious to Everard to go through the old Sun- 
day routine again, and think that this simple, quiet, 
wholesome life had been going on all through those weary 
prison years. There was Mr. Marvyn, the curate, who 
had instructed his youth, preaching the old familiar ser- 
mons, with their scraps of learning and difficult theolog- 
ical and ethical problems, which flew so far over the 
heads of the slumbering congregation; there was the har- 
monium, a little touched with asthma, and played, as of 
yore, by Mrs. Wax, who, with her husband, had survived 
all the changes, and gallantly faced all the requirements 
of new education codes; there were the whole clan of 
Hales and Straun, and the discontented tailor, whose dis- 
content was now silvered by the dignity of hoar hairs, and 
William Grove, and his mate Jem. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 355 

Job Stubbs, the chorister whose levity had been pub- 
licly rebuked by his pastor, now sat among the basses, 
and thundered out deep chest notes from beneath his 
white surplice, himself the parent of light-hearted boys 
and girls; Dicky Stevens, also a husband and father, sat 
near him, as of old, but led the tenors instead of the 
trebles, and sent his naughty boys to be tamed by the 
hand which had redeemed his own youth from the 
tyranny of the stick. In the afternoon, Mr. Maitland 
preached in the sweet, paternal, simple strain that had so 
impressed Everard ’s youth, with the beautiful Maitland 
voice and manner, and the pure diction he had loved. 

It was easy to see whence the dean’s great powers were 
derived; it was impossible not to think that talents as 
great, nay, perhaps in some respects greater, than his 
were buried in this humble little village. His son’s sud- 
den flights of inspiration were indeed wanting in the vil- 
lage priest’s quiet eloquence, but his sermons had some- 
thing that was lacking in the dean’s — namely, the steady 
glow of a fervid and unaffected piety, which only aimed 
at making his hearers better men and women, and thought 
not of ambition and self. Nunc Dimittis was the good 
old gentleman’s theme, and it filled Everard’s heart with 
a beautiful peace. He did not know how appropriate it 
was to the occasion, since he did not dream that these 
were the last words the gentle priest was to say to his 
flock; nor did he dream that the sermon which he knew 
Cyril was then preaching before so different an audience 
in Bel minister Cathedral was to be the last of the bril- 
liant and soul-searching orations which had won him so 
lustrous a name. 

“ My children,” said Mr. Maitland, in conclusion, “ I 
beseech you to keep innocency; for that, and that alone, 
shall bring a man peace at the last.” Strange echo of his 
son’s first sermon in that church! 

It had been whispered about that the broken, wistful- 
eyed man sitting in the Rectory pew was no other than 
the too-notorious Dr. Everard, whose trial and sentence 
were still so fresh in the village memory. Searching 
glances were directed upon him during afternoon sermon, 
and many eyes recognized the features of the handsome 
and hopeful young doctor under his wan and changed 
aspect, so that when Everard came forth into the after- 


356 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


noon sunshine, he was surprised to see a little lane formed 
about the churchyard path, and to find himself accosted 
by name. There had from the first been a faction in the 
village convinced of Everard’s innocence. It was the 
head of this faction who now spoke. 

“ Glad to see you back, sir,” blurted out Straun, with 
a perspiring effort, as he took off his hat and held out his 
great hand. “ We knowed you never done it.” 

“ Ay, we knowed you never done it,” chimed in Wil- 
liam Grove and some others, advancing also with out- 
stretched hand. “ Granfer, he knowed you never done 
it; and this here is Granfer’s tombstone,” added the 
shepherd who had seen Everard on his road to Widow 
Dove’s on the fatal afternoon, bringing his hard hand 
down on the stone, as if its existence were a solid proof 
of Granfer ’s valuable opinion on the subject. 

“And Widow Dove,” said Tom Hale, the old soldier 
“ as her daughter married my wife’s brother, as set up in 
the hardware line at Oldport, it lay on her conscience 
when she come to die, as she never said nothing about 
her fire being out that afternoon, and no candle, and the 
door shut, when you came up and thought the house 
empty. Many’s the time she’ve spoke of that to my wife 
on her dying bed, as helped nurse her, and had it wrote 
in the family Bible.” 

“ And my little gal, she minds now how you give her the 
penny that night,” added William Grove, pushing for- 
ward a bashful, buxom young woman, with a child in her 
arms, who courtesied and blushed. “ Growed up she is, 
and made a granfer of me, zure enough,” her father 
added. 

Everard could scarcely speak; he could only grasp each 
proffered hand and murmur some vague words of thanks, 
but his heart was deeply stirred as he passed along the 
lane of kindly, hearty faces, and went out into the road, 
where he found Farmer Long and his family, who were 
waiting to welcome him and express* their sorrow at the 
unmerited calamity which had befallen him. 

This little outburst on the part of the stolid, undemon- 
strative rustics was so unexpected, and so strong a proof 
of the feeling with which his innocence was regarded by 
some of his old friends, though not, as he well knew, by 
all, that it almost overpowered him, and he was glad to 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


35 ? 


lake refuge within the Rectory gate. On turning to shut 
it, he saw his friends still standing in the afternoon sun- 
light, with their hats off: till he should have vanished 
from their sight, and he again removed his own. 

He sat with Mr. Maitland and Lilian under the thick- 
leaved lime-tree, silent and happy, watching the shadows 
turn soft and slant, and the swallows dart across the 
sunny blue, while the father and daughter told him many 
things that had come to pass in his absence, and tea. was 
brought out; and finally, Mr. Maitland sank into the 

K sful slumber which usually followed his Sunday 
•s. Then Lilian took the cat in her arms, and 
walked toward the field to visit her invalid animals. 

“ Why do you carry that great creature ? " asked 
Everard. “ Let me take him for you." 

“ As if Mark would suffer any one else to carry him ! " 
laughed Lilian as the cat, with an indignant look at 
Everard, clasped his fore paws round her neck, and 
rubbed his head against her cheek. “ You cannot imag- 
ine how I love the thing, Henry ; he is a link with the 
past. Do you remember the day we found him, a stray, 
half-starved kitten, up by Temple Copse ? It was the 
Christmas vacation, and you and I and Cyril were talking 
about his chance of taking honors. How happy we 
were ! " 

“It was a frosty day," continued Everard, musingly, 
“and the kitten was numb with cold till you warmed it 
in your furs. Its bones were staring through its 
skin." 

“ And it has loved me ever since — me and Cyril only. 
Mark never forgets Cyril, but runs to him still," said 
Lilian, stroking the warm soft fur. “ Only once did 
Mark make a mistake — on that fatal evening when he ran 
after the gray figure in the dusk, else he never ran after 
any human being but myself and Cyril. Was it not 
strange, Henry ? " she added, finding that he made no 
comment. 

“The whole occurrence was strange, dearest, and 
better forgotten," he replied, evasively. 

“Do you think it was an optical delusion?" she 
persisted, after some trivial and irrelevant remarks on the 
part of Everard, who wished to change the subject. 

“ No doubt it was ; perhaps a light was reflected from 


358 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


some quarter by the opening of a door. Who knows ? 
One is often deceived in the twilight, when everything 
is more or less ghostly. That old beech still stands. It 
will be down some stormy night.” 

“ Cats are not deceived by the twilight,” continued 
Lilian, with a tremor in her voice; “ they see better in 
the dusk. Oh, Henry,” she added, with a stifled cry, 
“ there was but one the cat ever followed! ” 

She was trembling, and for the moment Everard 
paused with a blanched cheek, unable to say anything. 

“ You have brooded too long over this,” he said at 
last, with a lame effort at lightness, “and your imagina- 
tion creates bugbears from it. The cat probably saw or 
smelt a mouse, and ran after that. Or he may have 
been merely frisking about, as cats do, in the dusk. 
Think no more of it, Lilian. Let us bury that troubled 
past forever.” 

“It is not possible, Henry,” she replied, still trem- 
bling. “ Things that are branded into one can never be 
forgotten. Hear Henry, tell me one thing. Do you 
know who did that dreadful thing for which you suf- 
fered ? ” 

“How should I know?” he returned, in a hard voice 
that he could not control. “ I do not think it will be 
known, Lilian, till the day when all things are revealed. 
There is an impenetrable mystery about it. Let it re- 
main. Why lift the veil? ” 

Lilian gazed earnestly upon his troubled and averted 
face, and then said, in low, thrilling tones, “ Henry, you 
know who killed Benjamin Lee, and you know that the 
man who did it wore your clothes and passed up the stair- 
case in the dusk that night.” 

Everard's heart stood still, and his temples throbbed. 
“ Dear,” he replied, “ I do know who killed that poor 
man, but I do not wish to reveal it. I have known it for 
eighteen years and have seen no cause for revealing it. 
Such knowledge would benefit no human being; it would 
inflict terrible suffering on some. Do not tempt me to 
break my silence, Lilian; it is a point of honor.” 

Lilian had dropped the cat on the grass, and was lean- 
ing against the light iron fence of the„paddock. She now 
turned, and, clasping Everard's arm with convulsive force, 
looked imploringly in his face. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


359 


“ Tell me,” she cried, “ tell me that it is not so — that 
I am mistaken; that it was a bad dream — an evil fancy! 
Say, oh, Henry, if you love me, say it was not he! ” 

She was sobbing now, and quivering all over in un- 
speakable agitation — she who was so calm and self-con- 
trolled usually. Henry drew her to him, and strove by 
caresses and words of love to soothe her, but was himself 
far too much agitated to be able to deceive her. 

“Oh!” she cried, “I cannot, cannot bear it! My 
Cyril! my own brother! my poor, poor Cyril! I under- 
stand it all now.” 

“You know, dearest,” said Everard at last, with grave, 
compassionate tenderness, “that nothing can happen 
without the will of God.” 

Lilian's sobs became quieter at these words, and after a 
time they ceased, and she lifted her head and looked 
back at the lime-tree, beneath the shade of which they 
could see the white head of her sleeping father. 

“ There is one,” said Henry, pointing to him, “ who 
must never suspect.” 

“He never shall,” replied Lilian, striving to regain her 
habitual self-command. “But oh, my poor, poor boy! 
Such awful hypocrisy. I would not suspect for a long 
time; it seemed like a temptation of the evil one. Not 
until Marion's death. I think she was afraid to let her- 
self think. But she told me so much when she was 
dying. And Cyril — ah, Henry, he was always weak ! 
But a traitor ! oh, it seems incredible ! Ah, what a dark 
and terrible mystery our nature is ! And he let you suf- 
fer, you who loved him so ! Oh, my Henry ! ” 

“ You know, Lilian,” repeated Everard, in unutterable 
love and pity, “It was permitted by the Divine Will.” 
And the words again had a quieting effect upon Lilian, 
who had now regained her serene charm of face and man- 
ner, inwardly torn as she was. 

“And you saw him?” she asked. “ How could he 
meet you ? What could he say ? Oh, how can he have 
lived this lie, and borne this awful burden all these 
years ? ” 

“ His burden was heavier than mine,” Everard said: 
and then he described their meeting in the cathedral, 
Cyril's passionate sermon, his terrible agitation on recog- 


360 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


nizing him among the crowded congregation, and his own 
letter of forgiveness to the unhappy man. 

But they each wondered that he had not yet answered 
the letter. 

“ Doubtless there will be an answer to-morrow,” spid 
Everard. 

<e And I must go to him and tell him that I know and 
pity all,” said Lilian. “ Yes, there will be an answer 
to-morrow.” 

But the answer never came. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

It was said that the pope, on being asked once if he\ 
knew anything of the Church of England, replied that 
he thought he remembered having heard something about 
an eloquent dean in that communion, named Maitland. 
Others told the story differently, and averred that it was 
Bishop Oliver who had conferred such luster on the 
national Church. 

The Bishop himself, on being asked whom he considered 
the first preacher in the Church, had replied that Dean 
Maitland was undoubtedly the second , his interrogator 
divining, from a shrewd twinkle in the episcopal eye, that 
there would be a lack of delicacy in pressing him to name 
the first. The same querist, on putting a similar question 
to the dean, had been met by a genial smile, and the 
candid but laughing avowal that he had never heard any 
one compared to himself, unless it was the bishop ; for 
the dean's ingenuous, almost child-like, candor was not 
one of the least of his social charms. 

The two ecclesiastics were rivals not only in the pulpit, 
but in the world. Both were favorites at Court and in 
general society; but the bishop lacked the personal 
beauty and grace of the dean, and, though a good talker 
and clever raconteur , and possessed of a fund of genuine 
humor, he had not the dean’s bright, swift wit nor his 
light and playful touch in conversation: his mirth, like 
his intellect, was elephantine in comparison with the 
pard-like gracefulness of the dean's. Nor did the bishoj 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 361 

possess that rare and magnetic power of attracting and 
subjugating people's hearts peculiar to Cyril Maitland, 
and given to a few choice spirits destined to rule men. 

His features were square, massive, and expressive of 
solid intellect, unvisited by the lightning flashes of emo- 
tion and thought which gave new beauty to the dean's 
beautiful face. Bishop Oliver was past middle age, and 
looked as if he had never been young, while the dean 
looked as if he could never be old. He was a good man, 
though human. In all the farthest recesses of his mem- 
ory there was nothing he feared to look at; there was no 
spiritual tragedy in his life; he was unacquainted with 
the depths of human agony. Thus his sermons, though 
possessing a more level and sustained excellence than the 
dean's, though showing greater intellect and learning, 
had infinitely less power to touch men's hearts; nor was 
he ever carried away beyond the limits of his will, and 
thus enabled to carry others away, as the dean was. 
People did not fly to him for spiritual help, as they did 
to the dean, for he did not possess his absolute sympathy 
with the sinful; their lives and experiences differed so 
widely from his own spotless career, that he could not 
but regard them as aliens, strive as he would to call them 
brothers. 

But there was something in Dean Maitland's way of 
regarding sin and sinners which opened the darkest re- 
cesses of people's hearts to him, and men had not feared 
to pour into his sympathizing ear things which it froze 
the blood to hear. Very tender was the healing hand he 
laid upon sick souls — tender but firm. Ho one knew 
better than he the remedies which alone can heal such 
deadly maladies, although, like many physicians of the 
body, he had not the strength of will to apply his pre- 
scriptions to his own case. Of this he was sometimes 
conscious, as was seen in his last sermon to candidates for 
ordination, when he had taken for text, “ Lest I myself, 
when I have preached to others, should become a cast- 
away." 

Never for a moment let it be thought that sin is in any 
way necessary or good or helpful, anything but vile and 
injurious in itself or in its far-reaching consequences; yet 
it is an undoubted fact that in some natures a heavy fall 
leads to a higher spiritual development. Good is stronger 


362 


TEE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


than evil, and the eternal purpose which rules in all 
things, and against which nothing human can prevail, 
often appears to bring the brightest light from the thick- 
est darkness. Thus this man's black iniquity was made 
an instrument of healing to others. 

The bishop's detractors accused him of worldliness and 
ambition, and said that he misapplied St. Paul's injunc- 
tion, to be all things to all men, and was too good a 
courtier to be a good Christian. 

It must be confessed that the bishop, being human as 
well as Christian, did greatly love the esteem of men, and 
particularly of princes, and in his heart of hearts felt it 
hard that he and the dean should have their lines cast in 
the same place, expressly, as it seemed to him, that the 
luster of his own renown might be dimmed by the greater 
brilliance of his rival's. They were, however, the best of 
friends — for even the bishop was subjugated by the irresist- 
ible charm of his rival's manner whenever he came into 
personal contact with him — and had been heard to 
observe, after one of these slight differences of opinion 
that must sometimes arise between the bishop and the 
dean that it was pleasanter to be at war with Dean Mait- 
land than at peace with the majority of mankind. Yet it 
was said of Bishop Oliver that he managed never to be at 
war with mortal man, Jew or papist, churchman or dis- 
senter, atheist or fanatic. 

The dean's preferment to the see of Warham was at 
once a rose and a thorn to the bishop, a rose, because it 
would remove his rival to such a distance that he would 
no longer daily overshadow him; a thorn, because the see 
of Warham was of greater dignity and emolument than 
that of Belminster. Thus he regarded it with mixed 
feelings, and had been heard to say that from the Deanery 
of Belminster to the episcopal throne of Warham, was a 
singularly sudden leap. 

Not that Bishop Oliver for a moment accused himself 
of so mean a thing as jealousy; he imagined himself to 
be actuated solely by deep solicitude for the weal of 
Church and State, which he sincerely thought himself 
better calculated to serve than the dean. But when, on 
the Sunday following the dean's illness in the pulpit, the 
bishop was sitting tranquilly at luncheon, he was greatly 
discomposed by an observation from one of liis "young 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


363 


people, to the effect that the premier was coming down 
to Belminster that very afternoon for the express purpose, 
it was said, though this was not the case, since the minis- 
ter chanced to be passing a Sunday at Hewhurst Castle, 
of hearing the bishop-designate preach. 

“Nonsense, my dear Mabel !” he said. “Ministers 
have something better to do than to be running about 
after popular preachers, particularly while Parliament is 
in session.” 

A young clergyman present passed his napkin before 
his face to conceal an irrepressible smile, and remem- 
bered how differently the bishop had spoken of people 
who came to hear him preach. 

“Well, my dear father, I can only regret the levity of 
Mr. ChadwelPs disposition,” returned Mabel; “for he 
certainly telegraphed last night to know if the dean was 
to preach this afternoon.” 

“ I thought,” returned the bishop, “that his recovery 
was singularly rapid. He was very ill on Friday. It is a 
great pity that he should excite himself so much; he will 
kill himself one of these days. And that kind of sermon 
does no permanent good.” 

“By the way, sir,” said a son, “there is a queer story 
about the dean. Some woman who died at the hospital 
last week accused him of all manner of goings-on with 
her last breath, I hear.” 

“ Tittle-tattle, Herbert; nothing more. Local celebri- 
ties are always the centres of scandalous report.” 

“ The fierce light that beats upon a deanery,” laughed 
the young fellow. “ Well, these were strange doings for 
a dean, I must say.” 

The bishop adroitly started a fresh topic, but he could 
not help reflecting in his heart of hearts that the doings 
attributed to the dean by the half-uttered, half sup- 
pressed rumors he knew to be flying about, were indeed 
remarkably strange. For Alma's dying statement had 
not been made in private; the dean's delay and her own 
extremity had rendered her desperate, and her one desire 
was that the injustice done Everard should be known. 
He could not help reflecting, moreover, that there was 
probably some foundation for the rumors, however slight, 
and he felt that he should not be struck dumb with sur- 
prise if he learned that the brilliant and handsome 


364 THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 

ecclesiastic had sown a few wild oats in his hot youth, 
and bitterly repented the harvest such sowing always 
entails. He had often wondered at the power and pas- 
sion with which he depicted feelings of remorse; yet he 
was destined to be greatly surprised that afternoon. 

The cathedral was crowded. People sat on the choir 
steps and filled the nave to the furthest limits of hearing ; 
chairs were placed north and south of the choir ; the 
choir itself was as full as its stately decorum permitted. 
The well-known face of the premier was seen among the 
worshippers. This gentleman intended calling at the 
Deanery after the service, and had sent an intimation to 
that effect. 

The dean smiled rather grimly when he heard who was 
to be his guest that afternoon, and speedily quieted 
the agitation into which Miss Mackenzie was always 
thrown at the prospect of visits from people of distinction. 
“ You need not get out the best china,” he said, with his 
old playful way of alluding to stock jests; “I promise 
you that the minister will not come.” 

He was going to the cathedral, manuscript in hand, as 
he spoke. He turned back again, and met Miss Macken- 
zie descending the stairs, dressed ready for the cathedral, 
and she observed that he was paler than ever, and grave 
as he had been since his seizure on the Friday night. 

“Dear Miss Mackenzie,” he said, in his sweetest way, 
“ I have a little favor to ask you.” 

He paused, and Miss Mackenzie began, “ Oh, Mr. 
Dean, anything I can do — ” for she, like everybody 
else, felt that the dean conferred a favor in asking 
one. 

“ You have been a good friend,” he continued, “and I 
owe much of the peace and comfort of my home to you.” 

“And what do I not owe to you?” she replied, with 
enthusiasm. “ How happy I have been here! ” 

“ I hope, indeed, that you have been happy under my 
roof,” he went on. “I should be grieved if it were other- 
wise, for I am not all bad. I only want you. Miss Mack^ 
enzie, to do me the slight favor of staying at home this 
afternoon.” 

Then he turned and went, leaving the gentlewoman 
rooted to the ground with surprise until he reached the 
door, when he again turned and wished her good-by in a 


THE SILENCE OF LEAN MAITLAND. 


365 


voice that she never forgot. Reflecting on this little in- 
cident afterward, she regarded it as a strong proof of the 
solid friendship which existed between them, and enjoyed 
many a comfortable cry over it in subsequent years. 

The organ was rolling great waves of sorrowful music 
about the vaulted roof of the cathedral. Dr. Rydal, the 
organist, being plunged in one of those fits of profound 
melancholy to which the artistic temperament is liable. 
Such a gloom had not brooded over him for years, and all 
his efforts to shake it off and modulate his mournful 
cadences into more joyous harmonies were vain; so at last 
he gave rein to it, and passed out of one minor key into 
another, until he glided finally into the passionate plead- 
ing of Mendelssohn’s “ 0 Lord, have mercy and blot out 
my transgression,” from the St. Paul, and the choir 
paced in with even step, a long procession of white robes, 
closed by the dean’s scarlet hood and the bishop’s lawn. 

People noticed the dean’s worn face and his look of 
utter weariness, particularly when he stood up to read the 
First Lesson, which chanced to contain the pathetic story 
of the death of Absalom, and never, they thought, was 
the pathos of that divine narrative, the stumbling-block 
and the despair of most readers, more truly and beauti- 
fully rendered. His magnificent voice never for a 
moment escaped his control, but pealed steadily on, giv- 
ing due weight and meaning to every syllable, and throw- 
ing the full measure of the stricken and penitent father’s 
anguish into the heart-rending words, “Oh, my son 
Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had 
died for thee, oh, Absalom, my son, my son!” words so 
nobly simple in their unutterable sorrow. 

Many eyes were wet when the dean ended his reading, 
and most of those who were listening remembered of how 
many Absaloms he had been bereaved; but they did not 
dream how close the parallel was between him and the 
crowded mourner of Israel, who knew that his own sin 
had wrought him these terrible woes. 

He had not observed the immense concourse of people, 
his eyes had been bent on the ground, his soul had been 
too conscious of awful presences, too occupied by eternal 
realities, to be disturbed by anything human when he 
entered the holy building. But when he finished reading 
and was turning from the lectern, the force of old habit 


366 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


was so strong upon him that he lifted his head, and with 
one lightning glance swept all the crowded spaces of the 
vast building, and encountered the multitudinous gaze of 
the great sea of faces. 

He saw the premier, the familiar figures of the dwellers 
in the close, and the people from the city and its environs, 
the fashion of Belminster and its commerce, working 
people and idlers, the known and the unknown, the choir 
and the clergy, the bishop and the quaintly clad alms- 
men ; and, quite near him. Lady Louisa, with Lord 
Arthur and the duke and duchess, who had driven 
through the hot sun all the way from the Castle with 
their distinguished guest for the express purpose of hear- 
ing the famed eloquence of the bishop-elect. 

He thought that all that multitude must soon know his 
shame, they who honored him and hung waiting upon his 
words, and the thousand eyes bent upon him, more or less 
full of the deep thoughts stirred by the divine narrative 
he had just read so perfectly, seemed like so many points 
of flame darting into the most secret recesses of his soul ; 
he turned sick, and longed for the pavement beneath his 
feet to yawn and swallow him. What mortal could bear 
that crushing weight of scorn ? he wondered. The mere 
anticipation of it stopped his breath and made his heart 
shudder with a piercing pain ; it must certainly kill 
him. 

He returned to his stall, against the dark carved work 
of which his face showed like some beautiful Creek mar- 
ble, quite as white and still, and the organ pealed, and 
the voices of the full choir blended in magnificent billows 
of song, and the words of the “ Magnificat ” fell upon his 
unheeding ear, till a bass voice separated itself from the 
others, and thundered out, “ He hath put down the 
mighty from their seat,” in tones which seemed to con- 
vey a special menace to his troubled soul. 

The great congregation seemed to melt away, and 
before his eyes arose the face that had never left him 
since the moment when he first saw it, two nights ago — 
the worn and wasted face of his betrayed friend, with its 
loyal gaze of heroic sadness “ looking ancient kindness” 
upon his self accusing misery. Never, he thought, while 
he lived, would the look of that face cease to haunt him 
— never, perhaps, even through all the endless ages of 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 367 

eternity. And not that face alone; others less kindly 
arose to haunt his tortured soul with their glances. 

Alma Lee, in all the luster of her fresh, unsullied 
beauty, as he had seen her in her father's house on the 
night when he rescued her from the wagoner's rudeness; 
Alma, with the startled self-betrayal in her guileless, 
passionate glance; Alma, a little child, sporting with 
him over the meadow, wreathed with chains of flowers 
or crowned with berry crowns; and Alma, ruined, with a 
new and sinister splendor in her beauty, as she stood 
and swore away the honor of his friend. The child eyes 
hurt him most; “ Give me back my innocence," they 
said, in their dumb, sweet appeal. 

Then Ben Lee rose, with the fierce passion in his livid 
face, and the dreadful stain upon it: “ Give me back my 
life, and the honor of my child! " cried his angry, accus- 
ing glance. He saw the estranged, terrified look in 
Marion's dying eyes. His dead babes came with strange 
reproach in their appealing glances, and asked why they 
were only born to fade; and Lilian looked upon him with 
her sweet and loving gaze, and asked dumbly for the 
lover of her youth, and the children who were never 
born. “And Lilian must know all," he thought, with 
agony. But the look in the eyes of the betrayed was 
present through all, and that look was like an anchor to 
stay his shuddering soul upon. 

The voices of the choir rose upon the mighty pinions 
of the anthem, and eased his heart somewhat of its sore 
burden. “ Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all 
my misdeeds," they sang in strains that seemed to 
issue from the depths of broken hearts. The sweet and 
sorrowful music sank into his soul with healing balm: a 
pure-toned soprano repeated the phrase in soul-subduing 
melody, and a solemn peace fell upon him in spite of 
all those visionary glances turned so accusingly toward 
him. 

And now it was time for him to ascend the pulpit, and 
he rose from his stall with his accustomed air of quiet 
reverence, and walked up the choir. As he went, his eye 
fell upon that symbol of solemn humbug — for he did not 
believe in it; he had worn it and abstained from wine only 
for the sake of influence — the scrap of blue ribbon which 
was attached to his surplice, and he took it off and cast it 


368 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLANB. 


on the pavement beneath his feet. He had done with 
all fripperies and unrealities now; his soul stood at last, 
stripped of all pretense, in the awful presence of his 
Maker. 

Save that his face was very pale, and there were purple 
shadows about his mouth, there was nothing unusual in 
his manner as he ascended the steps to the pulpit amid 
the rolling harmonies of the hymn, in which the vast con- 
gregation joined, and looked round upon the familiar 
spectacle of the multitude of faces. There he stood, one 
sinful man in the presence of many sinful men, erring 
and weak and weary, and all unworthy of the garb he 
wore, yet the ambassador of high heaven, and charged 
with a divine message — a solitary figure on an awful emi- 
nence. 

It was a beautiful, an inspiring, and to him a familiar 
scene, which offered itself to his gaze. Immediately 
beneath and around him, shut in by the dark, rich cavity 
of the choir, were the white robes of the choristers, inter- 
spersed with the bright silk hoods of the clergy, and the 
gay and rich summer dresses of ladies, just relieved by a 
sprinkling of black coats. All down the nave spread a 
dark, dimly seen mass of human beings, varied by the 
glow of a soldier's coat or the brightness of a woman's 
dress catching the broad afternoon light, which, stream- 
ing through the great west window, and falling in broken 
rays of many-colored glory here and there, or, entering 
through the clear aisle windows, shed a diffused whiteness 
over all. 

On either side the choir, aisle and transept presented 
the same aspect of massed humanity ; some long, dusty 
rods of golden light fell athwart the shadowy choir, and 
turned a black oak crocket or fretted pinnacle to gold ; 
and from all that vast mass of standing worshippers rose 
the mighty surge of a penitential hymn, and rolled in 
solemn, far-spreading billows around^the sinful man who 
stood a witness between earth and heaven upon the 
solitary height. 

But the dean's steadfast, forward gaze saw nothing of 
the spectacle before him, a spectacle so wont to inspirit 
him to his loftiest flights ; he was not even conscious of 
those haunting, accusing glances from the past : was 
conscious, for those few brief moments in which he 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


369 


strove to nerve himself to an effort beyond his strength, 
of nothing but the presence of the Maker against whom he 
had sinned, and saw only the sorrowful glance which has 
gazed from the Cross all down the ages upon the deeds of 
sinful men. His soul stood, stripped and shuddering 
with the shame of its uncovered sin, in the searching 
light of the awful glance from which the first sinner 
vainly tried to hide. 

The vast surge of the hymn subsided, the plaintive 
murmurs of the organ died away lingeringly among the 
echoing aisles, the worshippers rustled to their seats, and 
every eye was turned expectantly upon the preacher, who 
quailed slightly before the innumerable gaze, and, com- 
ing to himself, thought with agony of the thing that 
must soon lie bare and open before them. His lips 
blanched in the strenuous anguish of his internal conflict, 
and the power of speech deserted him for a second or two. 
His manuscript lay open and ready on the desk; he 
looked upon and read the neatly written text. Then he 
took from his pocket a piece of folded paper, which he 
held in his left hand, as if it were some talisman, and 
found strength to begin. 


CHAPTER IX. 

As he opened his lips, a vision of the little church at 
Malbourne rushed swiftly before his mental gaze. He 
saw the familiar faces clustered about the heavy gray 
pillars, and the reverend figure of his father in the 
ancient pulpit, and all the holy counsels uttered in that 
father's beloved voice came upon him in one moment; 
but he did pot know that this his father's last sermon was 
the echo of his own first. 

He gave out his text, “ I will confess my wickedness, 
and be sorry for my sin," and began quietly reading from 
the manuscript before him in a clear and harmonious but 
strikingly level tone, which, though audible all over the 
building, did not correct the general tendency to drowsi- 
ness on that hot and drowsy afternoon. 

The premier and those who heard him for the first 
24 


370 THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 

time were disappointed, the premier deciding within 
himself that he would not confer much lustre upon the 
oratory of the Upper House, and would never endanger 
Bishop Oliver’s position as the best speaker on the 
Bench. 

It was a sermon such as dozens of clergymen turn out 
every day. The preacher exhorted his hearers to repent 
and confess their sins. He reminded them that repen- 
tance is the first and last duty which the Church enjoins 
on her children. He alluded to the different practices of 
the Church in different ages with regard to it, and its 
exaggeration in the Roman Communion and in old Amer- 
ican Puritan days. He observed that some sins exacted 
public confession. At this point he became a little paler, 
and his voice rose on its accustomed sonorous swell. He 
said that it was a right, and wholesome feeling which 
prostrated a crowned king before the tomb of the mur- 
dered archbishop at Canterbury, kept an emperor bare- 
foot in the snow at Canossa, and humiliated Theodosius 
before the closed gates of Milan Cathedral. “ Do you 
know, my brothers,” he continued, with a thrill of 
intense feeling in his voice, • “ why I speak to-day of the 
duty of public confession of public sin? I have a pur- 
pose.” 

He paused. For some moments there reigned that dead 
silence which is so awfully impressive in a vast assembly 
of living and breathing human beings. He paused so 
long that people grew uncomfortable, thinking he must 
be ill, and the buzzing of a perplexed bumble-bee, which 
had somehow strayed into the choir, and was tumbling 
aimlessly against people’s heads, sounded loud and pro- 
fane, and the man who could not repress a sneeze, and 
the lady who let her prayer-book fall felt each guilty 
of an unpardonable crime. Meantime, the dean gazecl 
quietly before him, and no one saw the chill drops of 
agony which beaded his brow, or suspected the anguish 
which literally rent his heart. 

The bishop with difficulty suppressed a grunt of disap- 
proval. “He pauses for effect,” he thought; “now for 
the fireworks! Divine rage consumes the dean! Out 
with the handkerchiefs! If people must rant, why on 
earth can’t they rant in barns?” 

“ My brothers,” continued the dean, at last breaking 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


371 


the thrilling silence, and speaking in a low but perfectly 
clear and audible voice, “ it is because I myself am the 
most grievous of sinners, and have sinned publicly in the 
face of this great congregation, the meanest among 
whom I am unworthy to address, because I wish to con- 
fess my wickedness, and tell you that I am sorry for my 
sin. I have no right to be standing in this place to-day; 
to be the parish priest, as it were, of this noble building; 
to fill an office hallowed by the service of a long line of 
saintly men. My life has been one black lie. The three 
darkest blots upon the soul of man — impurity, bloodshed, 
treachery — have stained my soul.” 

At these words there was a faint rustle of surprise 
through all the congregation. The bishop frowned ; 
“ He drives his theatrical exaggeration too far,” he 
thought. The duke and Lord Arthur recovered from the 
gentle slumber the sermon's beginning had induced. 
Every eye was fixed in wonder, interest, or incredulity 
upon the marble features of the preacher — that is, every 
eye within the choir; while to those outside it, who heard 
the voice from an invisible source, the effect was doubled. 

“My life,” he continued, “has been outwardly success- 
ful in no small degree. I have, in spite of my sin, been 
permitted to minister to sick souls; for the Almighty is 
pleased sometimes to use the vilest instruments for noble 
ends. I have sat at good men's feasts, an honored guest; 
yes, and at the tables of the great, the very greatest in 
the land. I have risen to a position of eminence in the 
ministry of our national Church — that Church whose 
meanest office better men than I are unworthy to fill. I 
have been offered still greater honors, the office of bishop 
and the dignity of a spiritual peerage, as you all know ; 
nor was it till now my intention to decline this promo- 
tion. I have been much before the public in other ways, 
which it were unbecoming to mention in this holy place.. 
Such dignities as have been mine, my brothers — for I 
may still, in spite of my sins, call you brothers, since I 
am still God's child, and only desire to return to Him by 
the way of penitence — such dignities are based upon the 
assumption not only of moral rectitude, but of decided 
piety, and neither of these has ever been mine. My be- 
loved brothers, hear me, and take warning, and oh ! pity 
me, for I am the most miserable of men. Like those 


372 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


against whom Christ pronounced such bitter woes, I have 
desired to wear long robes, to receive greetings in the 
market-place, to occupy the chief seats in synagogues; 
these things have been the very breath of my nostrils, and 
for these 1 have sinned heavily, heavily. The favor of 
men has been dear to me, therefore I offer myself to their 
scorn. To no man, I think, has man's favor been dearer 
than to me. Ah, my brothers, there is no more bitter 
poison to the soul than the sweetness I loved with such 
idolatry! Well does our Saviour warn us against it!" 

He spoke all this with quiet anguish, straight from his 
heart, his manuscript being closed; while at this point 
tears came and dimmed the blue luster of his large deep 
eyes, and coursed quietly and unheeded down his cheeks. 

The congregation still listened with wide-eyed wonder, 
not knowing how to take these extraordinary utterances, 
and half suspecting that they were the victims of some 
stage effect. But the premier’s face wore a startled gaze, 
and he looked round uneasily. The idea suddenly en- 
tered his head, that his recent elevation and the strenu- 
ously toilsome life he led had been too much for the dean, 
and driven him mad. Nor was he alone in his belief, 
which was shared by the dean's doctor among others. 

The bishop was terribly moved, and half doubtful 
whether it would not be well to persuade the preacher to 
leave the pulpit as quietly as possible; he too thought the 
dean mad, and trembled lest the gossip his own son had 
repeated might have driven his sensitive organization off 
its balance. Tears sprang to his eyes, and he loathed 
himself for the petty feelings he had suffered to enter his 
heart that very day. 

“ What I confess now, in the presence of God and of 
this congregation, against whom I have sinned," con- 
tinued the preacher, “ I shall confess shortly before the 
civil tribunals of this land, the laws of which I have 
broken. Nineteen years ago, when in deacon's orders, I 
led an innocent young woman astray." Here his voice 
broke with a heavy sob. “ I was the tempter — I, who 
fell because I deemed myself above temptation. My 
brothers, since then I have not had one happy hour. 
Mark that, you who perchance stand on the verge of 
transgression. But that is not all. With a heart still 
stained with that iniquity, which I vainly tried to expiate 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


373 


by bodily penance, I took upon me, in this very cathedral, 
the awful responsibilities of the priesthood, and fell 
into new temptation. 

“ The father of this poor girl discovered my iniquity, 
and, justly angered, fell upon me with violence. In the 
struggle, I know not how, I killed him. Yes, my 
brothers, look upon me with the honest scorn you must 
feel when you hear that these hands, which have broken 
the bread of life and sprinkled the waters of healing, are 
red with the blood of the man I wronged. But even that 
is not the full measure of my iniquity. I had a friend; 
I loved him — I loved him, I tell you,” he echoed, passion- 
ately, “more than any mortal man. He was a man of 
noble character and spotless life; he had gifts which 
gave promise of a glorious and beneficent career. Sus- 
picion fell upon him through my fault, but not my 
deliberate fault. He was tried for my crime, found 
guilty, and sentenced to twenty years* penal servitude.** 

Here the preacher trembled exceedingly, and was 
obliged to pause, while people looked from one to another 
with horror-stricken eyes and blanched faces, and the very 
air seemed to palpitate with their agitation. “ Two days 
ago,” continued the unhappy man, “ he came, fresh from 
the prison, to worship in this holy place. I was preach- 
ing — I, the traitor, the hypocrite; I who had lived in 
palaces while the friend of my youth pined in the 
prison I had deserved — I saw him; I recognized him 
through all the terrible changes that awful misery had 
wrought upon him. I could not bear the sight, and 
fled from it like another Cain. But I did not even then 
repent.** 

“ My brothers, this man wrote to me and forgave me, 
and that broke my stony heart. The Almighty had 
called me by heavy sorrows through many years to repem 
tance, but I repented not until I was forgiven. The Alb 
Merciful did not leave me alone in my wickedness. 1 
saw the wife of my youth pine away before my eyes, and 
my children fade one by one till my home became a deso- 
lation, and yet I sinned on, deadening my conscience by 
continual opiates of subtlest sophistry. It is not for me 
to detail these; to say how I persuaded myself that my 
gifts were needed in the ministry of the Church; that I 
was bound to sacrifice all, even conscience, to the sacred 


374 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


calling, and suchlike. Blind was I, blind with pride 
and self-love. Nay, I refused even to look my sin in the 
face. I stifled memory; I never realized what I had done 
until the awful moment of revelation, when I stood eye to 
eye with the friend I betrayed. My dear brothers, have 
you ever thought what years of penal servitude must 
mean to a gentleman, a man of refined feelings, of intel- 
lectual tastes, of unusual culture? To be herded with 
the vicious, the depraved, the brutal, the defective or 
degraded organizations which swell the mass of crime in 
our land; to be cut off from all other human intercourse, 
all converse with the world of intellect and culture; to 
pass weary, weary years in fruitless manual toil and pin- 
ing captivity; to wear the garb of shame; to be subject 
to rough and uneducated and not always kindly jailers” 
— here something choked his utterance for awhile — 
“to know no earthly hope; to see the long vista of 
twenty years’ monotonous misery stretching remorselessly 
ahead, and all this in the flower of youth and the blos- 
som-time of life? From six-and-twenty to six-and-forty! 
Can you grasp what that means? This, and more than 
this, I inflicted on the friend who loved and trusted me; 
and of this I declare before God and man I repent, and 
desire as far as possible to amend. 

“In a few days I shall be in a felon’s cell. I shall be 
happier there than I have ever been in the brightest mo- 
ments of my prosperity. My brothers, I still bear a divine 
commission to warn and teach; I beseech you to heed my 
story and take warning. Let me be to you as the sunken 
vessel which marks the treacherous reef beneath the 
wave! Listen and heed well what I say, as it were, with 
dying breath, for I shall be civilly dead, virtually dead, 
in twelve hours’ time. I repent, and there is mercy for 
me as for the vilest; but I can never undo the conse- 
quences of my sins — never, though I strove through all 
the endless ages of eternity. I cannot restore honor and 
innocence to her whom I robbed of these priceless jewels. 
I cannot give back his life to him whose blood I shed. I 
cannot recall the years of youth, and hope, and health, 
and power of wide usefulness which were blasted in the 
prison of my friend. It were rash to say that the 
Almighty cannot do these things; it is certain He cannot 
without disordering the whole scheme of human life, cer- 


the silence of bean maitlanb. 375 

tain that He will not. How far the human will can frus- 
trate the divine purposes has never been revealed to mor- 
tal man — is probably unknown to the wisdom of seraphs; 
but this we know, that nothing can happen without 
divine permission. It may be that man's will is abso- 
lutely free with regard to thought, and only limited with 
regard to action, to its effects upon others. Certain it is, 
that God can bring good out of evil, and that those who 
trust in Him, however oppressed and afflicted by the 
wickedness of their fellow-men, will nevertheless be 
delivered in all their afflictions, and that to them ‘all 
things work for good.' These are my last words, dear 
brothers. Ponder them, I beseech you, as men ponder 
dying words, even of the vilest." 

The dean ceased, and, turning, as usual, to the east, 
repeated the ascription with humble reverence. He then 
turned once more to the congregation, and seated himself, 
with a sigh of exhaustion; while the bishop, whose eyes 
were full of tears, stood with uplifted hand and pro- 
nounced the benediction, in a moved and awe-stricken 
voice, upon the agitated, lialf-terrified multitude, and 
upon the unheeding ears of the dean. 

As this strange discourse proceeded, the excitement of 
the congregation had waxed higher and higher, and 
spread itself by the irresistible contagion of sympathy 
which exists in a vast assembly. The prevalent idea was 
that the dean was mad. Many people present had heard 
the story of his youth, and knew how bitter had been his 
sorrow for his friend's disgrace, and it was not unnatural 
to suppose that long brooding upon his early grief had, 
in a moment of mental aberration, worked itself into the 
hallucination that he was himself the doer of the crime 
which had wrought such sorrow. 

In spite of the rumors circulated so swiftly within the 
last few days, there were not many who believed the 
dean’s accusations against himself. All were, however, 
immensely relieved when the painful scene was ended. 
Women had become hysterical, and some had fainted and 
been carried out ; the choristers were mostly pale with 
affright ; the clergy were dismayed, and whispered to- 
gether about the expediency of putting an end to this 
painful exhibition. Among the few who took the sermon 
seriously was the clergyman who had heard the death-bed 


376 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


statement of Alma Judkins. This man heard, and trem 
bled and wept. 

The prayer after the blessing was ended, the congrega 
tion rose from their knees, the organ broke forth in melo 
dious thunders, and the choir began their slow and 
orderly procession as usual. But the dean did not 
descend from the pulpit and take his usual place in the 
rear of the clergy, and the bishop, thinking he must be 
ill, directed a verger to go and offer him help. The man, 
excited and overstrained as he was by the strong feelings 
stirred up by that strange discourse, ascended the stairs 
and spoke softly to the dean, who had not moved from 
his marble composure. There was no answer. 

A cry burst from the man’s lips, and rang above the 
rolling organ harmonies to the very ends of the long 
aisles. A scene of extraordinary confusion ensued. The 
congregation, unnerved and excited as they were, ran 
tumultuously hither and thither; the choir broke from 
their ranks, and clustered about the pulpit steps like a 
flock of fluttered doves; the music stopped abruptly, with 
a harsh discord, for the pupil who was working the stops, 
looking down to discover the cause of the strange tumult, 
cried, “ The dean is dead,” and the organist sprang from 
his seat with a cry of sorrow. 

They lowered the lifeless form from the pulpit, and 
laid it upon the altar steps. Some surgeons — the dean’s 
own doctor among them — sprang through the crowd, 
and pronounced the dean to be beyond all human aid; 
and following them came a tall youth, dark-eyed, and 
dressed in black. 

“Not dead! not dead! Oh, my father!” he sobbed; 
“and I helped to break his heart! Oh, my father!” 

Him they hurried away unobserved, and the bishop’s 
clarion voice, a voice now without a rival, rang through 
the confused tumult, full of indignation and sharp 
rebuke. He bid the people return to their places, and 
consider the sanctity of the spot; and, when he was 
silently obeyed, he told them that the dean’s soul had 
fled, and asked them to kneel and repeat the Commenda- 
tory Prayer, while the body was borne from the spot. He 
made a sign to the organist, who, blinded with tears, 
resumed his seat, and thundered out the heart-shaking 
anguish of the “ Funeral March,” while at the same 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 377 

moment the heavy sound of the deep-toned knell boomed 
slowly over the startled sunshiny city. 

For a brief moment the bishop knelt silently by the 
lifeless form, which lay like a sacrifice upon the altar 
step, and, making the holy sign, he closed the beautiful 
eyes that would never more flash their electric radiance 
oi passion and intellect upon the listening multitude; he 
folded the lifeless hands upon the heart which had just 
broken in the stress of its awful anguish ; and, taking a 
fold of the surplice, he laid it over the marble face and 
the eloquent lips which would never more charm with 
their golden music. Just as Cyril shielded the unsus- 
pected passions which convulsed his face from the public 
gaze after his son's baptism, the bishop shielded the 
passionless quiet of his features now. 

Then the choir paced out in their usual order, save 
that the dean was borne by some of the choristers, all of 
whom loved him, and were eager to render him this last 
service; and thus/ to the wailing music and heavy thun- 
ders of the great dirge, and the deep booming *of the 
cathedral knell, amid the unwonted tears of his brother 
priests, and of nearly all who bore office in the cathedral, 
from the organist, whose tears dropped upon the keys as 
he played, and asked, “ When shall we see such another?" 
to the man who rang the knell — Cyril Maitland was 
carried out into the same warm afternoon sunshine that 
was gilding the Malbourne belfry, and shining on the 
honest faces of those who were bidding Everard welcome 
after his long exile, and offering him the simple homage 
of their belief in his innocence. 

“How are the mighty fallen! the beauty of Israel is 
slain upon the high places! " mourned the bishop, 
silently, in the words of David over his fallen foe and 
friend — words which echoed through the hearts of the 
other clergy, as they escorted their dean for the last time 
from the sanctuary. 


378 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


CHAPTER X. 

Still unconscious of the tragedy that was being 
enacted to its close in Bel minster Cathedral that sunny 
summer afternoon, the little family circle at Malbourne 
finished the quiet and holy day as they had begun it, and, 
retiring early to rest, slept such calm and refreshing 
slumbers as visit the gentle and the good. 

Lilian’s last thought on sleeping and first on waking 
was for Cyril, and how she might help to heal his sorely 
stricken soul, while the dreadful certainty which had 
followed on her long suspense and doubt on the subject 
of his guilt, though it filled her with deep sorrow, 
yet brought the calm which never fails to accompany 
certainty, however terrible. 

She was very quiet at breakfast next morning, and Mr. 
Maitland, observing this, attributed it to the reaction fol- 
lowing on the excitement of the last few days, and was 
more cheery and chatty than usual to make up for her 
defection. 

Mark Antony, like other invalids, was always very 
shaky of a morning, and declined this day to rise for his 
breakfast; so a saucer of milk was placed by his padded 
basket on the sunny window-sill, but remained untouched. 

The creature looked up in response to the caressing 
hand and voice of his mistress, and purred faintly, but 
turned away his head from the proffered milk; and, after 
coaxing him, and offering him everything she could think 
of, Lilian was about to leave her pet to rest and recover 
strength in the sunshine, when her retreating figure was 
stayed by a faint mew, and, turning, she saw the poor 
little thing staggering from its bed, and trying to follow 
her. 

She ran back in time to catch the little body as it 
tottered and fell, and, with a loving glance and one soft 
attempt at a purr, lay limp and lifeless in her hands. 

“ Oh, Henry!” she cried, the hot tears raining from her 
eyes, “my pretty Mark!” 

“I could have better spared a better cat!” said Mr. 
Maitland. 

“ No cat ever had a pleasanter life, or an easier death,” 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


379 


said Everard, stroking the inanimate fur. “ I will bury 
him for you, Lilian. Let us choose a pretty spot at once.” 

And they went into the garden, Everard procuring a 
spade and setting to work with a practised ease that 
reminded Lilian of his long years of hard labor, on the 
flower-border beneath the window, on the sill of which 
the deceased had spent so many sunny hours in peaceful 
meditation upon the follies of mankind and the wisdom 
of the feline race. 

The grave had been properly dug, and Everard laid 
the cat in it, and having covered him with a verdant 
shroud, reminded Lilian that mourners always turned 
from the grave before the painful ceremony of shovelling 
in the earth was performed, and Lilian was obeying this 
suggestion, when she discovered the hitherto unnoticed 
presence of a messenger, who handed her a telegram. 

She took it without suspicion and delayed opening it 
until she had spoken a kindly word to the messenger, 
and directed the gardener to take him to the kitchen 
for rest and refreshment. 

“ If he had not caused me such bitter pain,” she said, 
turning to Henry, and referring to the cat, while she 
broke open the envelope, “ I should not have loved him 
half so much.” 

“ Dear old Mark! We shall not look upon his like 
again. He did indeed give the world assurance of a 
cat.” 

He was not looking at Lilian, but into the grave, and 
was started by a low cry of intense agony, and looking up, 
saw her stagger with blanched face against the mullion of 
the window where the roses bloomed round her head. 

“ My poor, poor boy! ” she cried, gaspingly. 

Everard dropped the spade and came to her assistance, 
and she gave the paper with the terrible tidings into his 
hand. 

“ The dean died yesterday afternoon in the cathedral,” 
was the brief, stern announcement. 

“ My father, oh, my father! how shall we shield him?” 
cried Lilian, recovering her feet, but trembling all over. 
“ I always open his telegrams to spare him.” 

Everard said nothing, but crushed the paper fiercely in 
his pocket, while from the force of old habit he took 
his spade again and completed his task, no longer careful 


380 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


to spare Lilianas feelings, but stamping the earth reso 
lately down, and planting the displaced flowers upon it. 
Then he threw the spade aside with a deep groan. 

“ If he could but have spoken to me once, only once! ’ 
he said. 

“ He got your letter, dear,” said Lilian, in her usual 
tones, though her white lips quivered, and she still shook 
all over; “ there is comfort in that.” 

“ Yes, he must have got it. He could not have been 
too ill to read it. 4 In the cathedral/ Oh, Lilian, he 
might have died that night ! There was probably some 
heart disease. What did he think of his seizures?” 

“Mere nervous excitement. He did not consider him- 
self ill. He had advice. Oh, Henry, my father! ” 

“It will be a blow.” 

“It will kill him! He is feebler than you think. 
How can he bear this?” 

“ Dearest,” said Everard, with infinite tenderness, “it 
is but death, remember. He might have heard worse 
tidings.” 

“My poor Cyril! — yes. If we could only bear the 
consequences of our misdeeds alone, each in his own per- 
son, how much less sorrowful life would be! ” 

“And how much less joyous, Lilian! Ah, my dear, 
this must be faced, and we must take what comfort we 
can! ” 

Then they took counsel together, and decided upon 
assuming that the dean was very ill, and that they were 
summoned to him at once. They could then accustom 
Mr. Maitland’s mind gradually to the loss, and extinguish 
hope by degrees until they arrived at Belminster, when it 
would no longer be possible to cherish any doubt. 

Everard took upon himself the piteous task of break- 
ing the news, while Lilian made hurried preparations for 
their departure. He went with a beating heart to the 
study door, and knocked, and then it came like lightning 
across him that he had so gone to that room eighteen 
years ago, to receive, and not to give, ill tidings. 

When the gentle priest lifted his white head with a 
pleasant smile from the book over which he was bending, 
he could not but think of the awful look with which he 
had greeted him on his last entrance, nor could he quite 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


381 


forget the bitter injustice done to him then for Cyril's 
sake. It seemed a terrible retribution for the guileless 
man, whose only fault was too great a pride ' in his gifted 
son. Everard felt as if his heart would break. He could 
not speak, hut sat down and burst into tears, the only 
tears shed for Cyril in his home. The fact that he, and 
no other, had to deal the aged father this cruel blow, on 
the very spot where so cruel a blow had been dealt him 
through that dead man's fault, seemed an awful coinci- 
dence. 

Mr. Maitland's face changed; he was in a mood to 
anticipate calamity, but he took it very gently. 

“ Is it Lilian?" he asked, in a faint voice. 

Everard shook his head. 

“ Not, oh, not Cyril!” faltered the old man, with a 
piteous accent, which showed where his heart was most 
vulnerable. 

“He is ill, sir," returned Everard; “seriously ill." 

Then he told him of the arrangements they had made 
for going at once to Belminster, and offered what assist- 
ance was needed. 

Mr. Maitland said nothing, but rose to do as he was 
bid with a touching acquiescence, but very feeble move- 
ments. He seemed to age ten years at least before Ever- 
ard's pitying gaze, and was apparently unequal to the 
task of doing anything in preparation for his absence 
from his duties. 

They drove into Oldport just in time to catch the train, 
and Everard and Lilian trembled for the poor father as 
they passed the flaring posters which announced the con- 
tents of the daily papers, and read in great capitals, 
“Sudden Death of the Dean of Belminster." 

But Mr. Maitland did not appear to see them; he was 
bewildered and preoccupied in his manner, and asked 
only one question, “Did Cyril himself send for him?" 
and, appearing crushed by the negative answer, made no 
further observation upon passing events. He talked 
much in a wandering way of by-gone days, and related 
old forgotten events of Cyril’s childhood, surprising 
Lilian by vivid reminiscences that were dim or quite 
faded in her memory, and laughing gently from time to 
time at the child's quaint sayings and little drolleries of 
long ago. 


382 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


“ They were twins,” he said, addressing Lilian, as if 
she were a stranger, “a boy and a girl — such a pretty 
pair, and so good and clever! Exactly alike, and so fond 
of each other — so fond of each other! Poor dears!” he 
added, shaking his white head sorrowfully, “ drowned 
before their father’s eyes — before his very eyes.” 

“ Oh, Henry!” murmured Lilian, in a choked voice, 
“ what shall we do? He wanders; he confuses us with 
Cyril’s twins.” 

“ Do not excite him; it is only temporary,” Henry whis- 
pered back. 

“ Always a good son — a good son!” continued the 
stricken father, not observing their comments; “ my son, 
the Dean of Belminster. Do you know,” he added, 
with a pleasant smile, “he has been offered the Bishopric 
of Warham? ” 

“ Yes, dear father,” replied Lilian, soothingly; but he 
is very, very ill.” 

“111?” he returned, with a troubledlook; “not Cyril? 
He did everything well. A gifted youth. Little Lilian 
was so like him. 

“ Dear father,” said Lilian, when the last station 
before Belminster was passed, “ Cyril can never re- 
cover. ” 

“Is that true, Henry?” he asked, turning sharply to 
Everard. 

“ It is too true, sir,” he replied, gently. “ Try to be 
calm; we shall be at Belminster in five minutes.” 

The old man looked about him in a hopeless, bewildered 
manner, and tried to speak, but his trembling lips refused 
utterance. Lilian caressed him, and spoke soothingly to 
him, as if to some frightened child. “Cyril is gone 
to his rest, dear,” she said at last, her voice breaking as 
she spoke. 

“Is he — dead?” he asked, with great difficulty; and 
Lilian replied in the affirmative, and he smiled a gentle 
smile that went to their very hearts, and said nothing 
more. 

They drove through the city and into the close, in the 
sunny, slumbrous noon, past the red-brick houses, look- 
ing blank in the sunshine, with their white blinds darken- 
ing the windows; beneath the great leafy elms, over 
which some rooks were sailing; past ‘the hoary fragment 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND .* 383 

of cloister, along which two clergymen were pacing, and 
talking with bated breath of yesterday's tragedy; be- 
neath the cool shadow of the great gray minster, whose 
vaulted roof and long aisles had scarcely ceased to thrill 
with the passionate anguish of Cyril's breaking heart, 
and round whose lofty pinnacles swallows were sweeping in 
the warm, blue air; and drew up before the pointed arches 
of the silent Deanery, the door of which opened noise- 
lessly and discovered a weeping figure ready to receive 
them. 

Before they could respond to Miss Mackenzie's greeting, 
Everard was obliged to call Lilian's attention to her 
father, who had to be lifted from the carriage and taken 
at once to bed, where he remained for many days in a 
lethargic condition. 

There would be no inquest. Miss Mackenzie informed 
them, the death being perfectly natural and accounted for 
by the disease from which his medical adviser, as well as 
the dean, had long known him to be suffering — a disease 
which might still have permitted him years of life and 
strength under favorable conditions. His children had 
not been sent for, as, under the very painful circum- 
stances, Miss Mackenzie could not undertake the respon- 
sibility of summoning them. 

“ Painful circumstances?" asked Lilian, whose marble- 
white features showed scarcely more life than those of 
the brother over whose corpse she had just been bending- 
in tearless, speechless sorrow, whose features indeed 
looked more like those of the dean than ever. 

Miss Mackenzie having turned the key in the door to 
insure uninterrupted privacy, sat down in the darkened 
chamber, and, saying that Dr. Everard was better calcu- 
lated than any one else to judge of the accuracy of what 
she was about to relate, told them that it was the general 
opinion that the dean had been visited by temporary 
insanity while in the pulpit the day before — an opinion, 
however, which was not shared by the doctor. Then, 
beginning with the dean's unwonted demeanor on the 
Saturday^ and the abrupt manner in which he sent his 
children away, she related the whole story of the last 
Sunday, and the substance of the extraordinary sermon 
he had delivered with his dying breath. 

Lilian listened quietly without any interrogation what- 


384 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


ever; but when Miss Mackenzie came to the dying man’s 
terrible confession, her marble stillness left her, and she 
burst into tears and wept silently till the end of the story, 
murmuring, under her breath, “ Thank God! oh, thank 
God!” She felt that her brother was in some measure 
restored to her by his penitence. 

The dean’s affairs were in perfect order; he had made 
every preparation for death. The bishop was co-execu- 
tor with Lilian, of a will he had made some time previ- 
ously, by which he left half his property to Henry Ever- 
ard, and the other half to his two children, under the 
trusteeship of Lilian, till they should be of age, when the 
boy, in consideration of his infirmity, was to receive two 
thirds of the children’s moiety, and the girl one. 

Certain legacies were to be deducted from the whole 
amount of his property, and, by a codicil, added on the 
day before his death, there was to be a further deduction 
of five hundred pounds, which was bequeathed to “Bern 
jamin Lee, only son of Alma Judkins, widow, formerly of 
Swaynestone, and lately deceased in Belminster.” The 
said Benjamin Lee was further recommended to the 
interest and protection of “ my beloved twin-sister, 
Lilian Maitland.” 

The terms of this testament were as yet unknown to 
any one except the solicitor and the bishop, who had that 
morning acquainted himself with them. He had macU 
this early inquisition into the dean’s temporal affairs in 
consequence of finding in the study a sealed packet 
addressed to himself, as executor, “ In case of my death 
before I have time to lay it before the magistrates my- 
self,” dated on the day before his death, duly signed and 
witnessed, and containing a full and detailed account of 
the death of Benjamin Lee, “to be read immediately 
after my death, that justice may be done as soon as possi- 
ble to those I have wronged.” 

The bishop, who had with natural reluctance under- 
taken the management of the dean’s affairs only upon his 
earnest solicitation, and under the consideration that in 
the course of nature the dean would outlive him, now 
wished most heartily that he had had sufficient strength 
of mind to resist his importunity on the subject. He 
wished it doubly when, on that very morning, the clergy- 
man who had heard Alma’s confession, and taken it 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


385 


down at her request in writing, to which she affixed her 
signature, confided the circumstances to him and asked 
his advice upon the subject. 

Both the bishop and Mr. Strickland had separately hes- 
itated to publish the dead man’s disgrace, though the 
latter had been solemnly charged to do so by the dying 
Alma, and summoned to her death bed for the express 
purpose of clearing Everard. The bishop, even after 
reading the written confession, still held to the theory of 
insanity; bnt, after the coincidence of the two indepen- 
dent confessions, there was no longer any room for doubt, 
and he felt it his duty to communicate at once with the 
Everard family, and take instant steps toward clearing 
Henry Everard's character, which he did accordingly. 
Nevertheless, Mr. Strickland was glad to share the respon- 
sibility with him. 

But-of?this Miss Mackenzie, of course knew nothing, and 
without had enough to tell her auditors. She ended by 
putting into Lilian's hands a report taken in short-hand 
of the dean's last sermon, which Henry and Lilian perused 
together. 

Everard passed a long, long time alone in the presence 
of the dead. When he entered the silent, shadowed 
chamber from which the summer airs were excluded, and 
across the gloom of which one or two long golden rays of 
sunshine strayed through unguarded chinks, and where 
the air was heavy with that indescribable something that 
we dare not name, and laden with the rich perfume of 
flowers, he stood still, with a spasm at his heart, and 
feared to raise the handkerchief from the veiled face. 

And when at last he found courage to gaze upon the 
beautiful and placid features, pale with the awful pallor 
that only comes when the spirit has flown, he, who had 
looked upon death in the course of everyday duty so 
often and under so many painful circumstances, realized 
for the first time the icy horror and irreconcilable enmity 
of death. A sharp pain, like the contraction of iron 
wires, clutched at his eyes, which filled with those scald- 
ing tears that do not fall or give relief, and only spring 
once or twice in life from the very deepest sources in our 
nature; and for a few moments he would have given all 
that remained to him of life for one friendly glance of 
the beautiful ever-darkened eyes, one clasp of the pale, 
25 


386 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


cold hands, to hear those mute lips open once more with 
the cordial warmth of by-gone days. “ Old Hal!" he 
fancied he heard him say, as on the fatal day when last 
they met as friends. 

The quiet features never moved from their marble 
calm, and yet to the living friend's fancy the lights of 
mirth, of intellect, of affection, seemed to play upon 
them as in their by-gone youth, and the sacred flame of 
high aspiration, holy and pure passion, seemed to fire 
them. Old jests, old sayings, things grave and gay, 
earnest and light-hearted, rushed rapidly back upon his 
memory. He saw Cyril a boy again — a child with a 
seraphic face, and a half-piteous look of frailty and de- 
pendence, combined with intellectual power; he saw him 
a youth full of high hopes and warm enthusiasms, brill- 
iant, generous, fascinating, and above all, pure. 

He saw him in his young manhood, a being so saintly 
that his very presence seemed to banish the possibility of 
unholy thought; a lover, the purity of w T hose ardent love 
seemed almost to rebuke passion; a scholar, a priest: he 
thought of his many gifts and attainments, and all the 
beautiful promise of his early manhood. In such a 
nature, weakness and errors, the common heritage of 
humanity, might be expected; but there was an incredi- 
ble horror in the thought that this man was stained with 
vice and crime. Surely, Everard thought, as he had 
thought so many times in the loneliness of his cell, such 
things were utterly alien to this pure and noble nature, 
and utterly alien and incongruous they were. Surely, 
if there were a soul fitted to resist the importunity of 
man's lower nature, here was one; and here indeed was 
one. 

Then he recalled the anguish of Cyril's words — almost 
the last he ever spoke to him — “ Henry, I am a man! " 
and reflected that to a human being there is no moral 
descent impossible. Yet from what a height had this 
man fallen! And what a career he might have had, who 
now lay dead of a broken heart before him; and what 
anguish unspeakable might have been spared to others, 
had this gifted and noble nature had the courage to be 
true to itself! He thought of the terrific strength of 
those master-passions, ambition, pride, and self-love, in 
that otherwise weak soul, and shuddered. 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


38 ? 


They had thrown a rich Indian cloth over the library 
table, and upon this they had laid the dean, robed again 
as he had been at the moment of his death. The stil] 
room, with its studious gloom and its rows of learned 
tomes of divinity, was decked with flowers, and wreaths 
and bouquets covered the feet of the dead, and lay upon 
the outer folds of the white robe. In the pale hands 
Lilian had placed some blood-red roses, which she had 
brought from Malbourne, plucked from two trees they 
planted on their twenty-first birthday — an unacknowl- 
edged instinct made her shrink from the white flowers so 
usual in the death-chamber — and these and the scarlet 
doctor's hood gave a strange lustre to the solemn scene, 
and strongly emphasized the Parian whiteness of the 
face and hands. Those who saw Cyril die had seen the 
agony pass from his face, which was, as it were, transfig- 
ured at the close of his sermon by a look of ineffable 
serenity, a look that never left it. The dead face was 
that of the young ideal Cyril of Henry's youth, the man 
his Maker intended him to be; the man he ever lived 
afterward in his friend's thoughts. Both features and 
expression now had the strong likeness to Lilian's which 
had been so marked in their childhood. 

The door of the silent chamber was opened more than 
once that afternoon, and softly closed again, unnoticed 
by Henry; and those who thus forbore to intrude on his 
grief never forgot the scene — the dead man lying in his 
awful quiet like some sculptured effigy on a tomb, but 
not more statuesque than the living friend seated in the 
chair by his side, facing him, with his gray head sup- 
ported on his hand, and his eyes riveted upon the unsee- 
ing face. 

Pleasant summer sounds of bird and insect, and even 
the far-off laughter of children, fell deadened upon the 
hushed silence of that darkened room; the silvery ca- 
dences of the cathedral chimes entered it from time to 
time, and at the hour of even-song the distant thunder of 
organ-music broke solemnly upon its calm. 

The lines of straying sunshine stole slowly from point 
to point; once the end of a broken shaft fell upon the 
pale hands and gilded the edge of a paper clasped in the 
unconscious fingers — Everard knew that it was his own 
letter which had been so clasped at the moment of death. 


388 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


and which those who found it in the nerveless hand, on 
seeing, had again shut in the stiffening clasp — the waver- 
ing shadows of leaves and boughs played in varying 
dance over the closed blinds of the casements, hour after 
hour went by, and the living man seemed to change into 
the semblance of the still form he gazed upon. 

He thought many, many thoughts, such as no words 
can express, and experienced feelings such as no speech 
may render — thoughts which arise only when the intel- 
lect is quickened by the stir of unwonted feeling; 
thoughts of life and its deep meaning, death and its dark 
mystery; of the strangeness of man's destiny; of the pur- 
pose of his being; of the limits of human will, and of the 
eternal consequences of human action; of the glory and 
beauty of moral rectitude, and the nothingness of all 
human achievement besides. 

Through all his thoughts there ran the deep, strong 
undercurrent of unutterable pity for the man who lay be- 
fore him, slain in his prime by the pain of his own mis- 
doing, and blended with that, there was also a thankful- 
ness that his agony was stilled at last, and his soul at rest. 
He recognized the righteousness of the feeling which 
prompted Cyril to his tardy confession, and knew that no 
life save that imprisoned and degraded one from which 
he had but just escaped would have been possible to him. 
He thought of the iron strength of this man's pride and 
self-love, and wondered at the mystery of human ini- 
quity. 

He mused on his own passionate and life-long devotion 
to the man who had so terribly injured him, a devotion 
that neither his weakness nor even his crime could 
destroy, and he asked himself what it was in Cyril 
that so enchained not only the best and deepest affections 
of his friends, but also the love of all those with whom 
he came in contact. 

It seemed to him that there must be some deep and 
enduring virtue in a man who wins such love and devo- 
tion; it appeared incredible that the affections of honest 
hearts should be wasted on what is utterly worthless. 

He reflected how he could best serve the dead. He 
saw that he had been wrong in aiding him to conceal his 
past — that nothing but truth can serve any human being; 
and it seemed to him that he might fulfil those duties 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


389 


he had left undone, and carry on those that death had 
interrupted. He thought especially of Alma’s neglected 
child. 

He could not rid himself of the strong feeling we 
have in the presence of the dead, that the spirit is hov- 
ering about its forsaken shrine, and is conscious of the 
thoughts we cherish, and it seemed to him that the dead 
lips smiled approval of his resolution. He mused upon 
the unfinished letter found upon Cyril’s writing-table, 
and dated on the day of his death — “ Hear Henry, your 
noble letter has broken my heart,” and he felt as in his 
ardent youth, that he could go through fire and water for 
this man. 

He thought of old that Cyril’s character contained the 
ewig vjeiUiche element G-oethe prized. He was wrong; 
that saving ingredient was in his own manlier nature, not 
in the weak Cyril’s. 

Through all his long reverie he did not stir from his 
statue-like calm; nothing in the still chamber marred 
the quiet which is the homage we pay to that silent 
terror, death. His very breath seemed stilled in the 
intensity of his abstraction; he did not see the shifting 
of the sunbeams, the gradual drooping of the flowers, the 
fall of petal after petal, nor did he hear the recurrent 
chime-music, though years afterward these things re- 
called the solemn thoughts of that long vigil. 

The air was cool and refreshing, and the slanting sun- 
beams were dyeing the minster towers a clear wine-like 
crimson, when his long reverie was broken at last by the 
entrance of Cyril’s orphan children. 

Then he rose, greeted them affectionately, and, bidding 
them look on him as their father now, he left them alone 
with their dead. 


390 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


CHAPTER XI. 

Everard closed the door softly behind him, and went 
into the hall with a solemn radiance on his face, and was 
about to ascend the staircase to inquire into Mr. Mait- 
land's condition, when he was met by a gentleman with 
a benign and intellectual face and a dignified bearing. 

“Doctor Eyerard,” he said, in a rich, deep voice, 
“ allow me the honor of shaking hands with a man whose 
noble conduct has perhaps saved a human soul. I am 
the Bishop of Belminster,” he added, “the late dean's 
executor and friend, and am intrusted by him with the 
duty of clearing your character from the imputations 
which have lain so long upon it." 

And, leading him into the study, where the evidences 
of the dean's daily occupations and the empty chair by 
the table, on which lay his unfinished tasks, spoke more 
pathetically of his death than his quiet form itself, the 
bishop acquainted him briefly with all that the reader 
knows already concerning the will, the written confes- 
sion, and Alma's death-bed depositions. Having done 
this, he led him to the drawing-room, which was flushed 
through its closed blinds with the glory of the summer 
eunset, and introduced him to his brothers, Keppel and 
G-eorge, and his sister, Mrs. Whiteford, who were waiting 
to receive him, Keppel having brought the children from 
Portsmouth. 

They greeted him with cordial affection, and many 
expressions of regret and contrition for their long injus- 
tice; and Keppel introduced him to Lady Everard, to 
whom he had been married after his brother's disgrace. 

Henry was glad, though he could not but feel the 
meeting extremely painful, especially under Cyril's roof. 
The bishop had considerately withdrawn on presenting 
him, and, after the first confused expressions of welcome, 
regret, and congratulation, the relatives scarcely knew 
what to say to each other until Henry at last expressed a 
hope that all knowledge of Cyril's share in Benjamin 
Lee's death might be spared his children, which all 
agreed, if possible, to do. 

Admiral Sir Keppel and the Rev. George, though both 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


391 


some years older than Henry, looked younger ; neither 
had a gray hair, and both were fine, handsome, robust 
men. They were much distressed at the marks of hard- 
ship and suffering upon him, and Wrs. Whiteford wept 
and blamed herself greatly for allowing her husband 
to dissuade her from communicating with him in his 
trouble. 

“ You must pay us a long visit, Hal,” said Keppel. 
“ We have a nice place near Ryde, and the children will 
take you about in their boat, and make you young 
again.” 

“ And you must certainly come to us,” added George; 
“ my wife told me to bring you home this very night. 
Our place is very healthily situated on the hill yonder, 
just outside Belminster.” 

“And to us,” added Mrs. Whiteford. “My husband 
wants you to go for a cruise with us. That will recruit 
your health, if anything will.” 

“Ah, Henry, I can sympathize with you!” said 
George, with deep solemnity. “ I know what a prison is 
like. I had a twelvemonth, the effects of which I am 
still feeling,” he added, with a sigh of intense enjoy- 
ment. 

“ You had a twelvemonth?” inquired Henry, scanning 
his solemn clerical brother from head to foot with aston- 
ishment. 

“You may well look surprised,” said Keppel, “and 
wonder what parsons have to do with the inside of a jail.” 

“ I have experienced the honor of persecution, Henry,” 
explained George, with deep satisfaction. “ The rigors 
of my captivity were greatly softened by the sympathy of 
faithful people.” 

“ Rigors indeed! ” growled Keppel. “ The beggar was 
in clover, and almost on parole. But, as I tell George, 
he would have got double the time, and been cashiered 
into the bargain, if I had been in command.” 

“But, my dear George,” asked Henry, “what were 
you persecuted for? and how could you be imprisoned? 
I thought the fires of Smithfield, the memory of which 
you used to be so fond of recalling, were extinguished 
centuries ago.” 

“You are mistaken, Henry,” returned George, in his 
gruffest bass. “ In the seclusion of your dungeon you 


392 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


have been spared even the knowledge of the awful evils 
we in the world have been called upon to face. Never 
was the enemy of mankind more active than in these lat- 
ter evil days. The Catholic Church is beleaguered by all 
the powers of darkness, and those of her priests who dare 
to be faithful are hurled into dungeons.” 

“The Catholic Church? Why, I thought you were one 
of the strongest pillars of Protestantism, and renounced 
the scarlet woman and all her works? I am glad to see 
that persecution and dungeons have not permanently 
damaged you.” 

Keppel remembered the solemn tenant of the near 
chamber in time to stifle a burst of laughter, while 
George looked embarrassed, and stammered a good 
deal. 

“Ah, Henry!” he replied, “you are thinking of 
twenty years ago, when I was in the depths; I have 
advanced greatly since then.” 

“ You don’t mean to say you are a Ritualist?” asked 
Henry, eyeing his brother’s sacerdotal appearance with 
affectionate amusement. 

“My dear Henry,” said Keppel, interrupting George’s 
disclaimer of this term, “that fellow is the Ritualist, the 
ringleader of them all. What the service would come to 
if mutineers were let down as lightly as he is. Heaven 
only knows. Persecution indeed!” 

Henry smiled. “How this would have amused Cyril! ” 
he said, involuntarily. “No, George; I am not mock- 
ing,” he added, in response to a pained look on his 
brother’s face; for, as he learned subsequently, Cyril had 
been wont to tease his reverend brother a good deal on 
the extreme to which he had veered from his ultra- 
Protestant opinions. “ If you think it your duty to 
differ from your bishop, every one must honor you for 
going to prison about it. But your tenets used to be so 
very extreme in the other direction. Tell me about your 
children.” 

Every effort was made to keep Cyril’s funeral as pri- 
vate as possible, but in vain. Lilian, who was co-executor 
with the bishop, had so much to occupy her in her 
father’s illness, and her great anxiety to spare Marion 
and Everard the slightest suspicion of the tragedy which 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


393 


killed their father, that she left the funeral arrangements 
to the bishop, only stipulating for extreme privacy. By 
some perverse destiny, the bishop misunderstood her 
wishes and those of the family, which were that Cyril’s 
remains should be taken to Malbourne, and at the last 
moment it was discovered that all was arranged for an 
interment in the cathedral burial-ground. 

Thither, therefore, the dean’s remains were borne by 
the hands of those who had loved him and volunteered 
for this service, and the mourners, on following their 
dead into the cathedral, were dismayed to find it thronged 
from end to end by people, who wore mourning, and 1 
many of whom bore wreaths for the dead. They had 
feared a curious crowd, but the majority of this crowd 
were animated by something better than curiosity. Those 
who accepted the dean’s terrible revelations came to 
honor his penitence and respect his fallen estate; many 
clergy came in the spirit which moved his brother 
seer to do honor to the remains of the disobedient 
prophet. 

But the public at large utterly refused all credence to 
his guilt, not only at the time of the funeral, but even 
after Alma’s confession had been made public. Not a 
woman in Belminster, and not many men, held the 
golden-mouthed preacher and large-hearted philanthro- 
pist to be guilty. The question was largely discussed in 
the press, as well as in private circles; instances of simi- 
lar self-accusations of half-forgotten crimes by those 
whose minds ha$ been consumed by long-brooding grief 
and strained by overwork were cited, and it was the 
popular opinion that the dean died in the excitement of a 
terrible hallucination. 

Flags were floated half-mast high, shops were shut, and 
knells were tolled in the city churches and in some vil- 
lages on the day of the funeral. Clergymen came from 
rural parishes to pay the last homage to their great 
brother; the Nonconformist ministers, with whom he had 
always maintained such pleasant relations, flocked to the 
grave of the gifted and gracious Churchman; societies and 
charitable bodies in which he had taken interest sent de- 
putations. Most of those who saw him die were there. 
In the midst of this vast concourse, beneath the majestic 
arches of the lofty cathedral, amid the dirge-like thunders 


394 THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 

of the organ and the mournful chanting of the full choir, 
there was a pathetic simplicity in the plain coffin, followed 
by its half-dozen mourners, foremost among whom showed 
the silvered head and bowed form of the friend so deeply 
wronged by the dead. Cyril's weeping daughter was on 
Everard's arm, and Lilian led his blind son by the hand; 
Ingram Swaynestone and George and Keppel Everard 
closed the list of kinsfolk. But the uninvited mourners 
were innumerable, and the tears they shed were many, 
and not the least imposing part of the grand and solemn 
Burial Service was the immense volume of human voices, 
which rose like the sound of many waters upon the mourn- 
ful strains of the funeral hymn. 

At the close of the ceremony, Henry's attention was 
attracted to a young man who had pressed gradually 
nearer and nearer to the grave into which he cast a wreath, 
and who manifested great emotion, which he nevertheless 
tried hard to restrain. There was something in the hand- 
some face of this fine young fellow which sent a quiver 
through Henry's heart, and startled Lilian painfully — a 
something which moved Henry to accost the young man 
in the slight confusion which ensued while the little pro- 
cession was re-forming. 

“ You appear to he moved, sir," he said, in a low voice; 
“ may I ask if you were an intimate friend of the late 
dean's?" 

The youth was about to make some reply, when his 
gaze was arrested by the sorrowful glance of Marion, who 
was upon her uncle's arm. He stopped, as if in deference 
to her, and, instead of replying, took a card from his 
pocket and gave it to Everard, who read upon it, 
“ Benjamin Lee." 

“ That will explain to Doctor Everard," he said, 
observing the change upon Everard's face. 

Everard bid him call at the Deanery at a certain hour, 
and they had a long interview in the very room which 
had witnessed Cyril's anguish upon seeing his son. 

“ I would give half my life not to have spoken to him 
as I did," sobbed the young fellow. “Y don't want to be 
a gentleman now, Doctor Everard; that is all knocked out 
of me. I see what ambition did for my poor father. I 
heard his last words; I saw him die. I onty want to do 
some good in the world now. I am all alone. I buried 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


395 


my poor mother yesterday. She died at peace. She bid 
me, if ever it lay in my power, to serve you aud yours, 
remember how much she injured you, and try to atone 
for it. It cost her something to tell me what she had 
done to you. But she thought I would make one more 
witness. 

“ You shall atone/"' Everard replied. “ Look upon me 
as a friend. I, in my turn, will try to do for you what 
he would have done had he lived. Who knows/' he 
added, musingly, “ how far we maybe permitted to make 
up for each other’s shortcomings. If the one great vica- 
rious sacrifice is so potent, others ought surely to flow 
from it and share its potency.” 

He sent for Lilian, and from that moment Benjamin 
Lee was no longer alone in the world. She consulted 
with Henry upon the young man’s capacities and acquire- 
ments, and finally a situation was found for him in an 
office in Belminster, Lee having a great desire to live in 
the city which had such solemn associations for him. 
He also became subsequently, to his great joy, one of the 
choir, and his beautiful voice was daily lifted in praise 
and prayer beneath the solemn arches which had thrilled 
to his father’s penitential anguish. Marion and Everard 
Maitland in time became deeply attached to him, little 
dreaming of the tie that existed between them; they 
thought of him only as a friend and protege of their 
Uncle Henry. 

The depositions of the Dean, and those taken by the 
clergyman at Alma’s request, having been forwarded to 
the proper quarters, and corroborated by young Lee’s evi- 
dence and that of Everard himself, who was able, on his 
examination, to give a satisfactory account of the manner 
in which he spent the afternoon of Lee’s death, it became 
evident to the authorities that a terrible miscarriage of 
justice had occurred. How to repair this miscarriage was 
a difficult question, and one which exercised the mind of 
the House of Commons, before which it was laid, in no 
small degree. The ticket-of-leave was annulled, and 
Everard was declared to be a free man. The property he 
forfeited on his conviction was restored to him with its 
interest. There was some question of offering him em- 
ployment under government, which was, however, not 
carried out. 


396 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND . 


As soon as Everard was formally set free from the 
bondage of his ticket-of-leave, Lilian and he were quietly 
married. 

The drama is played out. The November afternoon 
closes in upon the same wide and varied landscape that 
Alma Lee saw so many years ago with innocent eyes and 
unawakened heart, all unconscious of the destiny whose 
black shadow was even then darkening her path; little 
dreaming of the temptation about to assail her, and 
the tragedy in which one sin was to involve so many lives. 

The ancient gray tower, dreaming in the soft afternoon 
haze, gives a mellow voice to the passage of time with its 
solemn, sweet chimes; the slender grace of the Victorian 
daughter-tower emulates its hoary majesty, as it rises 
above the smoke canopy of the little town on the river; 
the tiny bays are visible on the wood-clad horizon; the 
flocks spread on stubble and down; the cornel is purple 
in the ivied hedgerow; the solemn, half-conscious silence 
of the chill gray afternoon seems laden with an unspoken 
mystery it would fain reveal. 

“ the silence grows 

To that degree, you half believe 
It must get rid of what it knows, 

Its bosom does so heave.” 

The fairy music swells as of old upon the listening air; 
the merry bell-peals blend and clash in a sweet disso- 
nance, changing into harmony, like the transient wrang- 
ling of happy lovers; the heavy rumble and creak of the 
broad wheels and stamp of the iron hoofs make a rough 
bass burden to the silver treble of the bells; and the 
nodding crests of the gayly caparisoned wagon-horses rise 
into view on the crest of the hill by the gate over which 
Alma Lee gazed in her unawakened youth, and thought 
of harmless commonplace things in which nothing tragic 
had any part. 

The sturdy steeds stop, as on that far-off day, with a 
gradual dropping' of the blithe bell-music; the great 
wagon is brought to with a rumble and clatter and cries 
of “ Whup ” and “ Whoa; " the drag is cast under the 
massive hind wheel; and Will Grove rests, as of old, 
against the strong shaft, and gazes over the gate at the 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 397 

still dreamy landscape, and recalls the day when Alma's 
beautiful young face and graceful form were outlined 
against such a chill gray sky as this. 

Will is stouter than on that day, and his limbs move 
more stiffly and heavily, and there are gray hairs in his 
thick beard. He wears no flower now in his felt hat, 
which has lost its rakish cock. He apostrophizes a sweet, 
flower-like face, which peeps roguishly over the wagon 
ledge at him, with a rough but kindly, “ Bide still, ye 
bad maide; " and the bad maid prattles on with cries of 
“ Granfer," and snatches at his hat; but he seems not to 
heed her, as he thinks of Alma and her tragic story, 
which will be related for years to come in the snug bar of 
the Sun, and by many a cottage fireside round. 

“ She were a bad 'un, she were!" he muses; and some 
vague notions of witchcraft and half-formed shadowy 
ideas of love-philters steal down through many genera- 
tions to his uncultured brain, to account for Cyril Mait- 
land's strange infatuation. 

And Alma hides her broken heart in her lonely far-off 
grave, just when she should be living in an honored 
prime; and Cyril's crushed spirit has rest in his grave, 
within sound of the same cathedral chimes. And how 
many gracious gifts and joyous possibilities and noble 
opportunities are buried with these two tardily penitent 
sinners! Some vague feeling of the pity of it all stirs Will 
Grove's heavily moving emotions, as he cracks his whip 
and strides onward, waking the fairy music of the bells in 
its blithe and changing cadences. 

There are the Swaynestone woods; but the house pre- 
sents a blank face, with its shuttered windows and closed 
doors, and no smoke rises from the chimneys, and no 
sound is heard about its courts. The Swaynestones are 
gone abroad for a year or two, to live down the memory 
of the dean's disgrace. And here is Malbourne; but the 
old faces are seen no more in the Rectory. A stranger 
preaches from the village pulpit, and strangers walk in 
the pleasant garden, and know nothing of the sweet and 
tender, if sad associations which hallow every tree and 
flower. Will Grove and his team go on their musical 
way, till the clashing cadences fade and die in the dis- 
tance, and the last gleam of brass-mounted trappings is 
swallowed in the evening shadows. 


398 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


Let us flit on the airy wing of Fancy southward, over 
the dim downs and the gray murmuring sea; over the 
orchards and farms of Normandy; across the broad 
poplar-lined plains of France, breathing warmer, clearer 
air with every breath; over the airy summits of the 
Vosges; over sunny Cote d’Or, where the vineyards have 
just yielded up their latest spoil, and lie brown and bare 
in their winter ; leep; over the green and pine-clad slopes 
of the Jura, warm now in the sun's western glow; over 
blue lake and icy Alp, till we rest on the northern shore 
of sweet Lake Leman, and see the solid stone towers of 
Chillon reflected in the clear, jewel-like waters. 


CHAPTER XII. 

AFTERGLOW. 

/ Not far from Lake Leman's shore at Montreux, a 
pretty ch&let, girdled round with the two-storied veranda 
so usual to Swiss houses, stands on a terrace among fruit- 
trees; and upon that terrace, in the warm, still air of the 
clear November sunset, stood Lilian, and gazed across 
the calm blue lake at the Savoyard Alps, which were 
already streaked and veined with snow, and admired the 
roseate glow which lighted the seven-peaked summit of 
the Dent du Midi as with celestial fire, thinking over the 
same tragic tale which was passing through the memory 
of the Malbourne wagoner to the accompaniment of his 
blithe bell-music. 

The ethereal Alpine glow suggested beautiful far-off 
thoughts to Lilian — thoughts of paradise and the rest of 
the departed, of the pardon and sweet peace of the peni- 
tent. Cyril seemed near, very near, to his twin-sister at 
such quiet moments, nearer than he had ever been since 
the sin which put apart their lives, so mysteriously 
entwined by nature. The tragic scene in the cathedral 
had restored him to her as in his stainless youth; not 
that she regarded the anguish which killed him as any 
expiation or felt his death to be anything but a mercy; 
he was restored because his falseness was gone and he was 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


399 


penitent; and she felt that their spirits now held mystic 
communion sweeter and purer than that of their guileless 
childhood, and rejoiced. 

She was leaning upon a wheeled chair, as she gazed 
upon the exquisite scene before her, and breathed the 
soft breath of the parting day. In the chair sat her 
white-haired father, with a happy smile on his beautiful 
placid face. 

“ You must go in now, dear,” she said, in the soothing 
tones we use toward little children; “the sun is gone.” 
And she pushed the chair along the terrace to an open 
French window, and led the old man, who was very feeble, 
under the veranda into a bright salon , where a wood fire 
had just been kindled on the hearth; and, placing him 
comfortably in an arm-chair by the leaping blaze, left him 
with a tender caress to dream and doze in the gathering 
twilight. 

She paused in the garden to pluck a sweet late rose and 
fasten it in the black dress she wore for Cyril, and then 
passed, with a light, swift step, through the gateway into 
the dusty high-road, and set her face toward the 
Jura, which lay dark against the incandescent sky of 
sunset. 

She had not gone very far along the pleasant road tow- 
ard the warm glory of the departing day, when her 
sweet, serene face, clearly illumined as it was by the after- 
glow, suddenly took a new radiance, and was, as it were, 
transfigured by such a look as no words can express; such 
a look as one or two of the greatest masters have suc- 
ceeded in painting in a Madonna face; such a look as 
only Christian art, and that at its very best, can portray. 
The source of this beautiful expression was the dark figure 
of a man standing in a wearied attitude, gazing over the 
lake, in strong relief against the western brightness. He 
turned at the sound of Lilian's light step, and met her face 
with a corresponding radiance in his brown eyes, and came 
toward her with a momentary elasticity in his wearied 
limbs. 

“ I was afraid I had missed you,” he said, suffering her 
to take some of the numerous parcels with which he was 
laden, and thus free one of his arms, in which she linked 
her hand with a loving pressure. “ It took so long to do 
all the commissions. Vevey was full; the whole canton 


400 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


was shopping there. The children? Oh, they are row- 
ing home. Obermann took a boatman, and the lake is 
like glass.” 

“ And you are tired with the walk, Henry.” 

“ I was till I saw you. I cannot get over this weakness 
yet, Lilian. Of course, it must take time. But I am 
quite resigned to the fact that I can never be strong 
again.” 

“ But you are stronger. Herr Obermann said this 
morning that you looked ten years younger,” said Lilian, 
with a wistful appeal in her voice. 

“ Infinitely stronger, dearest; and there is every pros- 
pect of my living to a good old age yet, and a happy one. 
Shall I tell you what I was thinking when I heard your 
step? I was thinking, ‘Suppose she had done as I 
wished, as every reasonable creature wished; suppose she 
had ceased to think of me, save as we think of the dead, 
and given her heart and youth to one who could have 
made her happy — ■' ” 

“ But you know that was impossible, Henry, when I 
had given my heart and my life to you.” 

“ Ah, Lilian, it is not every honest and loyal love that 
can survive such a discipline, and waste its youth and 
hope as you did yours on me! But suppose it had been 
so, and I had not succumbed to despair and died in 
prison, though I do not think I could have lived through 
those awful years without you.” 

“And yet you talk of my wasted youth.” 

“ And it was wasted for you, darling. But sup- 
pose it had been so, and I had regained my freedom, and 
found you, as you must ever have been, a kind, true 
friend, but the happy wife of another — of Swaynestone, 
for instance, as he told me you should have been — with 
your heart occupied by a mother's love and cares; — ah! 
my dear, how could I have faced life alone?” Henry 
paused, for his heart was so full that he could not speak, 
and the tears were in his eyes, and also in Lilian's, which 
were raised to his, speaking the language which no words 
can render. “What you have been to me! what you 
have done for me through all those years of beautiful 
sacrifice!” he added, when his voice came back. 

“ Dearest, I have only loved you,” replied Lilian. 

“You have only loved me,” echoed Henry, pressing her 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 401 

hand more closely to his heart; “that is all. Sometimes 
I think I should not have been happier if we had been 
united in our youth, and lived all those years of fuller 
life together. Darling, there are compensations: it was 
worth going to prison all those years to find you at the 
end.” And he thought, but did not say, that Cyril's 
treachery was atoned by his twin sister's loyalty. 

Lilian always felt that she must make up to Henry all 
the sorrow caused by Cyril; while Henry, remembering 
what Cyril's sin had cost her, felt that he could never do 
enough to make up for it. 

“ Of one thing I am quite sure,” he added, as they 
reached the gate, and the evening sky, with its one 
white star, looked down upon their happy faces, “ the 
young couple in the pension over the way have not half 
so sweet a honeymoon as ours.” 

Just then light footsteps came bounding up from the 
lake-side toward them, and Marion and the blind boy, 
Everard, their young faces flushed with pleasure and 
exercise, came running to them, followed by Herr Ober- 
mann, who now acted as the tutor to both boy and girl. 

“I rowed the whole way, and Marry steered; and look! 
what a sack of pine-cones I have for grandfather! " cried 
Everard, gayly, as Lilian received him with a caress, for 
they encouraged his caressing ways in consideration of 
the blindness which debarred him from the pleasure of 
realizing his friends' presence except by touch. Then 
they all entered the salon together, and grouped about the 
blazing hearth for the idle evening hour they so delighted 
in, while Herr Obermann left them to enjoy his pipe and 
his volume of Kant in his own especial den. 

Little Everard sat by his grandfather, and handed him 
pine-cones, which the latter threw on the fire, with child- 
like pleasure in the blaze and crackle they made, and in 
which the blind child also took a strange delight, saying 
that he could feel the brightness. These two were firm 
friends, never so happy as when one could help the other. 
Everard delighted to wheel his grandfather's chair, or 
lend him his arm; while Mr. Maitland would read aloud 
for the boy's benefit, indifferent to the book he read, since 
his memory had left him on the day of Cyril's death, and 
he could thus repeat the same book over and over again, 
with a fresh sense of pleasure each time, a power that was 
28 


402 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND . 


useful to the boy in enabling him to get passages., espe- 
cially passages of poetry, by heart. 

Mr. Maitland never realized Cyril's death; he remained 
under the impression that they were always on a journey 
to Belminster to visit the dean, and was perfectly patient, 
his lack of memory destroying all sense of the passage of 
time. Every evening, when Lilian visited him in his 
bed to bid him good-night, he asked if they were going 
on to Belminster to-morrow, and when Lilian replied, 
“Not to-morrow, dear father; perhaps the day after," 
went to sleep in perfect content, until one night, about 
three years after the dean's death, when, instead of put- 
ting his usual question, he said, very quietly, “ I shall ba 
with him before morning," and turned to his rest with a, 
happy smile, and in the morning they found him in the 
same restful attitude, dead. 

There was nothing distressing in the merciful infirmity 
which had spared his gray head such bitter sorrow. He 
was to the last the same courtly, polished gentleman; the 
same genial companion, delighting in all that was beauti- 
ful and elevating, and content to look on at the life 
going on around him. 

He could discourse of long-past events, and of art and 
literature, as well as ever, but his mind never received 
any fresh impressions after the tremendous blow that 
crushed it. On meeting strangers, he was sure to intro- 
duce the following phrase into the conversation : — “ You 
may perhaps know my son, the Dean of Belminster. He 
has just been presented to the See of Warham." This 
was the only painful circumstance connected with his 
infirmity, save that he never could grasp the fact that 
Henry and Lilian were married, and occasionally em- 
barrassed them considerably, by blandly asking them 
what date was fixed for the wedding, and always alluded 
to Lilian as Miss Maitland, a circumstance that led stran- 
gers to suppose that he referred to his granddaughter, 
Marion. 

The children were carefully guarded from all knowl- 
edge of their father's transgressions. It was, of course, 
easy to keep the newspapers from Everard; and, with a 
little care, Marion was also shielded from them. The 
Times of the Monday following the dean's death pub- 
lished the telegram stating that he had died suddenly in 


THE SILENCE OF DEAN MAITLAND. 


403 


the cathedral at the close of an eloquent sermon the day 
before, and also gave such a sketch of his life up to its 
close as is its usual custom on the death of eminent men, 
and this paper Marion read, greatly wondering that no 
account of dear papa’s funeral ever appeared. Lilian 
took them away from Belminster as soon as Mr. Maitland 
could be moved, to a quiet seaside village, where they 
remained until her marriage. To guard them more 
effectually from any chance knowledge of the truth, as 
well as to restore Henry’s shattered health, it was decided 
that the little family should live abroad for some years at 
least. 

His physician had told Henry that he would never be 
fit for mental labor of any intensity or long duration, and 
he accepted the prospect of a life of busy idleness, which 
in the end proved very happy, however different from that 
he had anticipated in his youth. He was thus obliged 
forever to renounce his beloved profession, though he 
never lost interest in it, or ceased to cultivate the mani- 
fold studies connected with it. In his quiet leisure h e 
found opportunity to set before the public much valuable 
information on prison life, and particularly to indicate 
its hygienic aspects, mental as well as physical. 

In the serene happiness of his later years, it was sweet 
to Henry to dwell on the brighter scenes of his life in the 
prison which had at last become so dear to him, and 
contained so many friends, and he often talked of it, the 
more so as little Everard manifested an intense interest 
in everything connected with captivity. He had all 
“The Prisoner of Chillon” by heart, and loved to go 
into the vaulted dungeon in the castle, and touch the 
“pillars of Gothic mold,” and the ring to which Bonni- 
vard was chained and listen to the lapping of the water 
on its massive walls, and hear people speak of the dim 
light with its watery reflections. Both children knew 
from their first meeting with their uncle of his unmer- 
ited punishment, and understood that his innocence had 
been proved beyond all doubt, but they never were told 
who was the real criminal. 

Marion remembered the incident of giving the hand- 
kerchief to the man whose shaven head roused her little 
brother’s innocent suspicions the day they waited in the 
pony-chaise outside the house of Leslie’s widow, and it 


404 


THE SILENCE OE LEAN MAITLANL. 


was her great delight, as well as her brother's, to get 
“ dear Uncle Henry" in the mood to relate the moving 
incidents of his escape and brief spell of freedom, and 
they invariably wept with great enjoyment at the tragic 
close of the narrative, when the fugitive sank into the 
death-like unconsciousness of exhaustion and starva- 
tion. 

Henry and Lilian became the types of true lovers in the 
eyes of the numerous young people growing up around 
them, and were always appealed to against the decisions 
of flinty-hearted parents and guardians in the crises of 
their love affairs; they also became a second father and 
mother to the many Maitlands, Swaynestones, Everards, 
and others of the rising generation, all of whom regarded 
a visit to Uncle Henry and Aunt Lilian as the height of 
bliss. So that, although their long-deferred marriage 
was childless, it was blessed with the love of many young 
creatures, besides the especial children, Marion and 
Everard and Benjamin Lee. 

The little family was already knit together on that 
November evening in bonds of strong and deep affection. 
They made a pleasant picture in the warm firelight, the 
white-haired man, with the blind boy nestling to his side, 
feeding the bright hearth with resinous fir-apples; Henry 
and Lilian side by side opposite them; and Marion sitting 
on the rug in the full blaze, with her head resting against 
Lilian's knee, while she read the letters in the firelight. 

“ The new dean," she quoted from her girl-friend's let- 
ter, “ is the antipodes of your dear papa, whom we shall 
never cease to lament. Mrs. Little's baby could not be 
got to sleep on any condition whatever, and naughty 

Canon Warne asked Mrs. L why she did not try one 

of the dean's sermons. He is dreadfully learned (the 
dean, not the baby), and a regular frump; his wife and 
daughters (five) are all frumps, with red noses and hands 
and big feet. We called at the dear Deanery on Thurs- 
day,. and oh! Marry, I thought my heart would break 
when I saw all the dear old pretty things; and when tea 
was brought in and placed on the very same table, Ethel 
and I burst out crying. Jim says it was the worst possi- 
ble form, and mother was ready to sink through the car- 
pet with shame. The dean is so absent that he stirs his 
tea with the sugar-tongs, and never remembers who peo- 


THE SILENCE OF BEAN MAITLAND. 


405 


pie are, unless it is desirable to forget. Imagine the 
contrast to our dean. Your uncle George is driving the 
bishop to distraction with his goings-on at St. Chad's. 
They say the poor bishop has gone down on his knees and 
asked him as a personal favor to travel for a year or so. 
The new tenor has the most glorious voice. Doctor 
Eydal says it makes him ten years younger. I think 
your uncle Henry knows him — a handsome fellow named 
Lee. The Times says that Lady Swaynestone has twins." 
(“ Dear me, uncle Henry;" interrupted Marion, “how 
twins do run in our family!") “The last we heard 
of them, Lionel and Lilian were as naughty as they 
could live, so it is a good thing. So Mr. Leonard Mait- 
land is to be married in the spring. Jim knows her peo- 
ple well. How we miss Everard's voice! etc." “And 
yet," said Marion, as she finished her letter, “I do not 
wish to go back to dear Belminster. It would be too sad." 

And her brother echoed her words; and then, after 
their evening meal of Swiss fare, Everard's violin and his 
tutor's came out, and there were music and the singing of 
sweet old glees, while Mr. Maitland sat listening happily 
by the fire, and Henry heard from behind his paper or 
joined in, when required, until the hour came for the 
blind boy to stand before his grandfather and repeat the 
evening psalms, which he knew by heart from his choris- 
ter experience; and the young folk and their grandfather 
went to their rest and Herr Obermann to his pipe, and 
Henry and Lilian were left by the bright hearth together. 
That was the happiest time in all the happy day. 


THE END. 




The Antique Library of Standard and 
Popular 1 2mos. 


ABBE CONSTANTIN. 

Halevy. 

ABBOT. Scott. 

ADAM BEDE. Eliot. 

AESOP’S FABLES. 
ALHAMBRA. Irving. 

ALICE. Lytton. 

AN AMERICAN GIRL IN 
LONDON. Duncan. 

ANDERSEN’S FAIRY 

TALES. Andersen. 

ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN. 

Scott. 

ANTIQUARY. Scott. 

ARABIAN NIGHTS’ EN- 
TERTAINMENTS. 
ARDATH. Corelli. 

AULD LANG SYNE. 

Russell. 

BARON MUNCHAUSEN. 

Raspe. 

BARRACK ROOM BAL- 
LADS AND OTHER 
VERSE. Kipling. 

BEHIND A MASK. Daudet. 
I CTROTHED. Scott. 

BETWEEN TWO OPIN- 
IONS. Loti. 

BEYOND THE CITY. 

Doyle. 

BIG BOW MYSTERY. 

Zangwill. 

BLACK BEAUTY. Sewell. 
BLACK DWARF. Scott. 
BLACK TULIP. Dumas. 
BONDMAN. Caine. 

BRIDE OF LAMMER- 
MOOR. Scott. 

BRYANT’S POEMS. 

Bryant. 

CALLED BACK. Conway. 
CAST UP BY THE SEA. 

Baker. 


CAXTONS, THE Lytton. 
CHANGE OF AIR. Hope. 
CHILDREN OF THE AB- 
BEY. Roche. 

CHOUANS. Balzac. 

CLEOPATRA. Haggard. 
CLOISTER WENDHUSEN. 

Heimburg. 

COUNT ROBERT OF 
PARIS. Scott. 

COWPER’S POEMS. 

Cowper. 

CRIQUETTE. Halevy. 

DANESBURY HOUSE. 

Wood. 

DANIRA. Werner. 

DARK DAYS. Conway. 
DAVID COPPERFIELD. 

Dickens. 

DEEMSTER. Caine. 

DEERSLAYER. Cooper. 
DEPARTMENTAL DIT- 
TIES. Kipling. 

DESCENT OF MAN. 

Darwin. 

DESPERATE REMEDIES. 

Hardy. 

DEVEREUX. Lytton. 

DIANA OF THE CROSS- 
WAYS. Meredith. 

DOCTOR RAMEAU. Ohnet. 
DOMBEY & SON. Dickens. 
DONOVAN. Lyall. 

DOROTHY’S DOUBLE. 

Henty. 

EAST LYNNE. Wood. 
ELSIE. Heimburg. 

ERNEST MALTRAVERS. 

Lytton. 

EUGENE ARAM. Lytton. 
EVOLUTION OF DODD. 

Smith. 


THE ANTIQUE LIBRARY. 


FAIR MAID OF PERTH. 

Scott. 

FAR FROM THE MAD- 
DING CROWD. Hardy. 
FIRST VIOLIN. Fothergill. 
FLOWER GIRL OF PARIS. 

Schobert. 

FLOWER OF FRANCE. 

Ryan. 

FORTUNES OF NIGEL. 

Scott. 

FROMONT, Jr. AND RIS- 
LER, Sr. Daudet. 

GLADIATORS. 

Whyte-Melville. 
GRAY AND THE BLUE. 

Roe. 

GREAT KEINPLATZ EX- 
PERIMENT. Doyle. 

GREEN MOUNTAIN 
BOYS. Thompson. 

GRIMM’S FAIRY TALES. 
GRIMM’S HOUSEHOLD 
TALES. 

GULLIVER’S TRAVELS. 

Swift. 

GUY MANNERING. Scott. 
HANDY ANDY. Lover. 
HANS OF ICELAND. 

Hugo. 

HAROLD. Lytton. 

HEART OF MIDLO- 
THIAN. Scott. 

HEIR OF LINNE. 

Buchanan. 

HEIR OF REDCLYFFE. 

Yonge. 

HORTENSE. Heimburg. 
HOUSE OF THE SEVEN 
GABLES. Hawthorne. 
HOUSE OF THE WOLF. 

Weyman. 

HOUSE PARTY. Ouida. 


HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE 
DAME. Hugo. 

HYPATIA. Kingsley. 

IN ALL SHADES. Allen. 
IN LOVE’S DOMAINS. 

Ryan. 

INTO MOROCCO. Loti. 
IRONMASTER. Ohnet. 
IRON PIRATE. Pemberton. 
IT’S NEVER TOO LATE 
TO MEND. Reade. 

IVANHOE. Scott. 

JANE EYRE. Bronte. 

JOHN HALIFAX, GEN- 
TLEMAN. Mulock. 

JOSEPH BALSAMO. 

Dumas. 

KARMA. Sinnett. 

KENELM CHILLINGLY. 

Lytton. 

KENILWORTH. Scott. 
KIDNAPPED. Stevenson. 
KINGS IN EXILE. Daudet. 
LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. 

Lytton. 

LAST OF THE MOHI- 
CANS. Cooper. 

LIGHT OF ASIA. Arnold. 
LIGHT THAT FAILED. 

Kipling. 

LORNA DOONE. 

Blackmore. 


LUCILE. Meredith. 

LUCRETIA. Lytton. 

MAN OF MARK. Hope. 
MAROONED. Russell. 


MARRIAGE AT SEA. 

Russell. 

MARTIN HEWITT. 

Morrison. 

MASTER OF BALLAN- 
TRAE. Stevenson. 


THE ANTIQUE LIBRARY. 


MASTER OF THE MINE. 

Buchanan. 

MAYOR OF CASTER- 


BRIDGE. Hardy. 

MEMOIRS OF A PHYSI- 
CIAN. Dumas. 

MERZE. Ryan. 

MICAH CLARKE. Doyle. 
MICHAEL’S CRAG. 

Allen. 

MIDDLEMARCH. Eliot. 


MILL ON THE FLOSS. 

Eliot. 

MINE OWN PEOPLE AND 
IN BLACK AND WHITE. 

Kipling. 

MONASTERY, THE Scott. 
MRS. ANNIE GREEN. 

Read. 

MY LADY NICOTINE. 

Barrie. 

NEWCOMES. Thackeray 
NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. 

Dickens. 

NORTH AGAINST 
SOUTH. Verne. 

OLD MORTALITY. Scott. 
ONE OF THE FORTY. 

Daudet. 

ON THE HEIGHTS. 

Auerbach. 

ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 

Darwin. 

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. 



Dickens. 

PAGAN OF THE 

ALLE- 

GHANIES. 

Ryan. 

PATHFINDER. 

Cooper. 

PAUL CLIFFORD. 

Lytton. 

PELHAM. 

Lytton. 

PERE GORIOT. 

Balzac. 

PHANTOM RICKSHAW. 

Kipling. 


PICKWICK PAPERS. 

Dickens. 

PILGRIMS OF THE 
RHINE. Lytton. 

PILGRIM’S PROGRESS. 

Bunyan. 

PIONEERS. Cooper. 

PIRATE. Scott. 

PLAIN TALES FROM THE 
HILLS. Kipling. 

PRAIRIE. Cooper. 

PRETTY MICHAL. Jokai. 
PRINCE OF THE HOUSE 
OF DAVID. Ingraham. 
QUENTIN DURWARD. 

Scott. 

RED GAUNTLET. Scott. 
REPROACH OF ANNES- 
LEY. Grey. 

RETURN OF THE NA- 
TIVE. Hardy. 

RIENZI. Lytton. 

ROBINSON CRUSOE. 

Defoe. 

ROB ROY. Scott. 

ROMANCE OF TWO 
WORLDS. Corelli. 

ROMOLA. Eliot. 

ST. RONAN’S WELL. 

Scott. 

SARCHEDON. 

Whyte-Melville. 
SCARLET LETTER. 

Hawthorne. 
SCOTT’S POEMS. Scott. 
SCOTTISH CHIEFS. Porter. 
SEA WOLVES. Pemberton. 
SHADOW OF A CRIME. 

Caine. 

SHE FELL IN LOVE WITH 
HER HUSBAND. 

Werner. 

SIGN OF THE FOUR. 

Doyle. 


THE ANTIQUE LIBRARY. 


SILENCE OF DEAN 
MAITLAND. Grey. 

SKETCH BOOK. Irving. 
SOLDIERS THREE. 

Kipling. 

SON OF HAGAR. Caine. 
SONG OF HIAWATHA. 

Longfellow. 
SQUAW ELOUISE. Ryan. 
STORY OF AN AFRICAN 
FARM. Schreiner. 

STRANGE STORY. Lytton. 
STRONGER THAN 
DEATH. Gautier. 

STUDY IN SCARLET. 

Doyle. 

STUDY OF GENIUS. 

Royse. 

SURGEON’S DAUGHTER. 

Scott. 

SWISS FAMILY ROBIN- 


SON. Wyss. 

TALE OF TWO CITIES. 

Dickens. 

TALES FROM SHAKES- 
PEARE. Lamb. 

TALISMAN. Scott. 

THADDEUS OF WAR- 
SAW. Porter. 

THELMA. Corelli. 


THREE MEN IN A BOAT. 

Jerome. 


TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

Hugo. 

TOLD IN THE HILLS. 

Ryan. 

TOM BROWN AT OX- 
FORD. Hughes. 

TOM BROWN’S SCHOOL 
DAYS. Hughes. 

TREASURE ISLAND. 

Stevenson. 

UNCLE TOM’S CABIN. 

Stowe. 

UNDER THE DEODARS 
AND STORY OF THE 
GADSBYS. Kipling. 

UNDER TWO FLAGS . 

Ouida. 

UP TERRAPIN RIVER. 

Read. 

VANITY FAIR. Thackeray. 
VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. 

Goldsmith. 
WAVERLY Scott. 

WEE WILLIE WINKIE. 

Kipling. 

WESTWARD HO. Kingsley. 
WE TWO. Lyall. 

WHAT’S BRED IN THE 
BONE. Allen. 

WHITE COMPANY. Doyle. 
WOODLANDERS. Hardy. 
WOODSTOCK. Scott. 

ZANONI. Lytton. 


LRB S ’21 























































'■ 

















* 














































